Converged Utilities Billing System for IoT Data Consolidation
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
Customers receiving services from multiple utility providers face inconvenience due to separate billing systems, leading to inconsistent billing and complex expense management, as existing systems are independent and lack communication between provisioning and billing systems.
Innovation Solution
A converged utilities billing system that includes a centralized inventory and order management module, data collection module, and utilities rating and billing module, which collects data from IoT sensors, processes it, and generates a single monthly bill for customers from multiple providers, ensuring consistency between billing and services provided.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If separate billing systems are used for each utility provider, then each provider can independently manage their billing, but customers receive multiple separate bills causing inconvenience and complexity in expense management
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges multiple separate billing systems into a single unified billing system that consolidates bills from multiple utility providers into one invoice. The system integrates billing data from different providers through a centralized platform, allowing customers to receive and manage all utility bills in a single location, thereby improving ease of operation while maintaining the independence of individual provider billing processes through standardized data interfaces.
2Adaptability or versatility
If separate billing systems are used for each utility provider, then each provider maintains independent control, but communication failures between provisioning and billing systems lead to inconsistent billing
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a centralized billing system as an intermediary between utility providers and their billing processes. This intermediary platform receives standardized data from multiple providers, processes it through unified logic, and generates consistent billing outputs. The mediator ensures data validation and reconciliation, preventing communication failures from causing billing inconsistencies while allowing providers to maintain independent control over their service provisioning.
3Adaptability or versatility
If multiple separate bills are sent to customers, then each utility provider can bill according to their own schedule, but customers face burden in tracking and managing bills with different payment due dates
Solution Approach 1:
The patent combines multiple bills with different schedules into a single consolidated invoice that presents all utility charges to the customer in one document. The system integrates billing data from various providers while standardizing the presentation format and payment terms, allowing customers to view and manage all their utility expenses together. This reduces the time customers spend tracking multiple separate bills while maintaining the flexibility of individual provider billing schedules through the unified platform.
Data Source
AI summary
A system for providing converged utilities billing includes a customer relationship management (CRM) module configured to receive information from utilities providers for providing different types of utilities to a customer based on respective utilities plans, the CRM module comprising a database configured to store information associated with the customer; a product catalogue configured to store plan information regarding at least one utilities plan in association with each of the utilities providers; a data collection module configured to receive raw data from a plurality of Internet of Things (IoT) sensors and to process the raw data to form processed data; and a utilities rating and billing module configured to receive the processed data and the information associated with the customer, and to generate a single invoice for the customer based on the received processed data and on the received information.