Celonis and The Good Quarter Company Launch Utilities Billing Solution to Optimize Meter-to-Cash Cycle, Reduce Costs and Enhance Customer Satisfaction

MUNICH and NEW YORK, May 22, 2025 – Celonis, a global leader in Process Mining, today announced the launch of the Celonis Utilities Smart Billing app powered by GQ. This new solution, co-developed by Celonis and The Good Quarter Company (GQ), optimizes the critical meter-to-cash process for utility companies, helping them improve billing accuracy, reduce operational costs, accelerate cash flow, and enhance customer satisfaction.

Utility companies strive to deliver reliable services while maintaining operational efficiency and customer satisfaction. The meter-to-cash process is crucial to achieve this, but inefficiencies often arise through inaccurate meter readings or malfunctioning meters, data entry errors in usage recording, inconsistencies in bill generation due to fragmented systems, and ineffective payment collection processes. These issues can result in revenue leakage, unpredictable cash flow, and customer dissatisfaction.

“The Utilities Smart Billing app empowers utilities to transform their billing operations and enables them to move from reactive issue management to proactive, data-led performance improvement,” said Israel Expósito, Industry Principal, Telecommunications & Utilities at Celonis.

“By bringing Celonis Process Intelligence to the meter-to-cash cycle, we were able to build a solution that provides real-time process visibility and business context necessary for long-term business transformation and process excellence,” said Ashwin Santhanam, Founder of The Good Quarter Company.

Transforming Meter-to-Cash with Process Intelligence

The Utilities Smart Billing app seamlessly integrates with enterprise systems like SAP ECC and S/4HANA Utilities, allowing utilities to leverage their existing infrastructure while benefiting from the app’s advanced process intelligence capabilities. It streamlines the meter-to-cash process, driving performance excellence across critical business objectives:

• Mitigate Risk: Reduces invoice error rates, improves reading accuracy, and captures previously unbilled revenue by addressing common issues like late/forgotten meter reads, incomplete invoices/payments, instrument errors, and reliance on estimates vs. actuals.
• Optimize Working Capital: Accelerates cash flow by improving invoice timeliness, decreasing time-to-invoice, and increasing on-time payments by addressing delayed invoices and payments.
• Reduce Costs: Improves operational efficiency by lowering the cost per meter read, increasing first-time right readings, and decreasing manual intervention rates across the meter-to-cash process through optimized meter read types, routing/prioritization, and exception handling, while minimizing rework and cancellations.

Key Features of the Celonis Utilities Smart Billing app:

• Billing Timeliness Tracker: Monitors and optimizes billing cycle times, ensuring invoices are generated and sent promptly.
• Meter Read Performance Analyzer: Evaluates the accuracy and timeliness of meter readings, identifying problematic meters or areas.
• Invoice Volume Forecaster: Utilizes historical data and trends to project future invoice volumes, allowing for better resource allocation and capacity planning in billing operations.
• Executive Dashboard: Provides a high-level overview of key meter-to-cash metrics, enabling quick identification of issues and informed decision-making by management.
• Leading Indicator Alert System: Identifies early warning signs of potential problems in the meter-to-cash process, such as increasing read failures or billing delays, allowing proactive intervention.
• Performance Benchmarking Tool: Compares current meter-to-cash performance against set targets and industry standards, highlighting areas for improvement and celebrating successes.

Significant Value Realization: Accelerating Meter-to-Cash Optimization

Utilities are already realizing significant value with the app. After rapid growth, a North American utility with billions in annual revenue, faced meter-to-cash challenges. By deploying the Utilities Smart Billing app, it gained real-time process visibility and the ability to drive targeted improvements. The solution identified costly unresolved exceptions delaying invoices and provided insights to streamline exception handling, significantly reducing the need for manual meter rereads and associated truck rolls. Key results included:

• Identified $1.5 million in savings related to truck rolls within 4-6 weeks and $3-4M+ in savings across the full meter-to-cash process.
• Reduced manual work and accelerated the meter-to-cash cycle through proactive monitoring.
• Enabled the implementation of a data-driven business operations strategy.

The Utilities Smart Billing app is the latest addition to the Celonis Platform Apps Program, enabling companies to quickly realize value with solutions built by Ecosystem partners on the Celonis Process Intelligence Platform.