Reduced concession fees as a sales argument for iMSys: Highlighting potential & increasing customer loyalty

Beyond the pure commodity business, energy suppliers – and in particular competitive metering point operators – increasingly aim to enhance customer communication in order to strengthen customer loyalty and generate new leads. Load profile analyses are a suitable tool for this, as load peaks are often linked to concession fees, enabling key account managers to communicate previously undiscovered savings potential directly to customers. However, many end customers lack the basic technical prerequisite: an intelligent metering system (iMSys). At the same time, analysing load profiles requires significant manual effort on the part of energy suppliers. Individual Excel files must be used, which leads to high transaction costs and prevents the identification of broader savings potential. "At GreenPocket, we took the challenge of the manual effort involved in determining reduced concession fees as an opportunity to develop a feature for automated calculation – in close dialogue with our customers. Both energy suppliers and end customers can now benefit equally from this innovation," explains Dr Thomas Goette, CEO of GreenPocket.

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Reduced concession fee: multiple benefits at once

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While large industrial and commercial companies automatically qualify for the reduced levy due to their annual consumption exceeding 100.000 kWh, customers with a total annual consumption of 30.000 kWh or more and a peak load exceeding 30 kW in at least two months may also be eligible for a reduced levy of up to 95%. Since this eligibility is not automatic, many of these customers are unaware of their potential savings. Energy suppliers, who are legally required to roll out intelligent metering systems (iMSys), can use these additional savings in concession fees as a strong argument to highlight the benefits of iMSys to end customers – thereby helping justify the increased metering costs. This approach not only improves acceptance of iMSys installations but also supports a faster rollout. Once an iMSys is installed, the energy management software can automatically analyse the load profiles of customers with annual consumption between 30.000 and 100.000 kWh to determine their eligibility for a reduced levy. Key account managers at energy suppliers can identify eligible customers at a glance and inform them directly. But this innovative feature offers even more benefits – for both energy suppliers and end customers:

For suppliers:

• ‍Higher end-customer loyalty: draw customers' attention to potential savings in ancillary energy costs and achieve competitive advantages
• Cross-selling opportunities: engage customers in dialogue and offer additional services

For customers:

• ‍Savings and energy efficiency: pay less energy costs and use systems more efficiently
• ‍Higher customer satisfaction: through direct contact, better support and services

Complex data information as a basic building block

To develop the innovation, the GreenPocket team dived deep into the subject matter and laid the foundation for the feature: the database of ene't GmbH was integrated in compliance with data protection regulations in order to implement precise address resolution. On the one hand, the database connection makes it possible to retrieve up-to-date market data from the platform. On the other hand, data relating to the use case can be obtained, such as the amount of the licence fee as well as the name of the networks and the address of the network operator. With the data from the ene't database paired with the existing load profile data, the software is now able to analyse load profiles across the board in order to point out potential for energy sales.

The new feature in GreenPocket's energy management software shows that the automation of load profile analyses offers enormous savings potential. The rollout can be driven forward in a targeted manner thanks to the advantages shown. Energy suppliers benefit from the enhanced GreenPocket energy management software as a sales tool by increasing customer loyalty. In addition to lower ancillary costs, the new meters also provide companies with efficient energy management, which leads to a reduced and more sustainable use of resources in the long term.

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