| | December 20141CIOReview

CIOREVIEW.COMDECEMBER - 30 2014T h e N a v i g a t o r f o r E n t e r p r i s e S o l u t i o n s

ENERGY TECHNOLOGY SPECIAL

Nag Ramachandran,

CEO

iSIGMA, Inc: Trusted Customer Care & Billing

Solutions for Energy Providers

iSIGMA, Inc: Trusted Customer Care & Billing

Solutions for Energy Providers

Company of the Month

Frank Li,

President & CEO, Panton Incorporated

| | December 201460CIOReview

To address energy conservation, generation

companies and commercial organizations

which deal in services like rating, programs

and measure implementations take a multi-­

prong approach. The nation is cautious about its carbon

emissions and aims to earn carbon credits by curbing

on these carbon emissions. Thermal energy generation

companies, seen today, play important role in this process.

The challenge for the company is to meet the energy

demand of consumers and controlling emission. One

of the approaches taken by the company is to perform

an energy audit of the dwelling before and/ or after

construction. The audit captures data related to heating,

cooling, hot water, lighting, and appliance energy loads

and consumptions. The article scope is limited to single

and multi-­family homes.

The company implements an energy conservation

objective through the program. This program is mostly

implemented by a non-­profit organization which focuses

on green earth/energy

conservation ob-­

jective. The

c o m p a n y

allocates a

Fraud detection need in the energy program implementation for Utility companies By Atul Gunjal, CEO and Ameet Shedge, CTO, iWorkTech

CXO INSIGHT

budget and sets a target for implementation. The budget covers oper-­

ational expenses plus rebate or incentives offered to consumers. The

objective of the program gets implemented by the staff and corrective

measures are implemented by its auditor or rater.

The challenges faced by the CIO is to see that each dollar spend,

is well spend and to detect instances of fraud and incompetency. The

proactive steps taken towards these challenges help in ensuring that

the objective of the program is met.

Program Implementation Platform (PIP)

PIP consists of the following modules It is not hard-­and-­fast rule that all modules need to

present. Some can be dropped or some other can be

added as per the program needs. These modules are

implemented as portals which can be accessed through a

browser or desktop solution. Some modules are needed to

be accessed by the field executives;; hence it needs to be

available as a mobile solution.

Data Flow, approach and algorithmThe data flow can be depicted as follows:

First, the home data is gathered by the file executive. It is important

that this data complies with the energy model. This helps to get

This approach ensures that continuous Quality Assurance is performed to detect and report any anomalous result in the submitted data

consistency in the rating. To achieve this, the following is

necessary:

Clear and consistent information for the rater

Training needs to cover assessment methods, measures, and

data points.

Independent third-­party assessment needs to be done on the

field reviews and submitted data files. This is done to detect any

fraud or incompetency.

o Establish limit on input variables

o Determine bounds check

o Detect and warn users for input values beyond reasonable

limits

o Generate XML data which is stored in the repository for

pattern detection, future use, data exchange with other systems.

This approach ensures that continuous Quality Assurance

is performed to detect and report any anomalous result in the

submitted data. This continuous approach absolves staff from

routine manual checking. The automated nature of the job helps

to handle any increase in the volume of homes. This process can

also detect existing patterns or establish a new pattern. This

pattern is stored in the repository. This rule-­based approach

helps to build a flexible system.

Some of this system’s silent features are:

Backend system

Sanitize data received

Analyze data based on several data validations

Possess multiple methods for

o data analysis

o pattern recognition

Flag files with issues

Deliver report on analysis

Risks Unknown nature of data needs to be flagged and further

analyzed. This analysis helps determine whether new data needs

to be consumed by the system for fraud detection or not.

Constraints

Dependency

Conclusion PIP helps CIO to keep focus on the project objective. PIP’s

Fraud module helps to get consistent rating and helps detect

fraud and incompetency. The fraud detection helps to keep

tab on the unfair practices. By taking proactive measures, like

training, helps to address issues like incompetency.

Atul Gunjal