What are Utility Management Services?

Definition

Utility management services are software applications that enable companies to better budget, report, forecast and optimize their energy spend through granular, real-time data.

Utility management services also help organizations automate the validation of utility bills and tenant metering to improve cost allocation internally.

Why it Matters

Utility costs make up one of the largest operating expenses of running a building. For a long time, these costs were assumed to be fixed - the utility bill came each month and there was nothing you could do about it.

There are different levels of utility management solutions. Some systems simply store raw utility billing files, while others enable fault detection through equipment-level power consumption readings.

For purposes of managing  the utility bills for a portfolio of buildings, invoice storage may be sufficient. However, to improve energy efficiency, better data and analysis is required.

Enertiv’s utility management solutions utilize the data coming off these meters and sensors so that it can be analyzed and visualized in cloud-based software.

From there, specific insights are derived using a combination of expert analysis and artificial intelligence.

The end result is that utility costs can become a managed expense that is continuously optimized. In addition, when investment and retrofit decisions are made, the results can be effectively measured and verified using real-time data instead of the “snap shots” associated with energy audits.

Furthermore, many commercial real estate properties still rely on manual tenant metering and bill generation as part of their tenant submetering workflow. Not only is the process  expensive and time-consuming, there are often errors and discrepancies that are frustrating for tenants and owners alike.

Enertiv offers cost-efficient utility management solutions to automate the tenant submetering processes that speed up billing and eliminate errors.

When tenant metering is done, the data flows into software that gives transparency into recovery rates at the portfolio, building and tenant-level.