Utilities evolving toward an intelligent revenue operations strategy no longer wait until a bill becomes overdue to take action. Instead, with a unified platform with embedded artificial intelligence (AI) and automation, such as Smartflex, they can anticipate financial risk, protect revenue throughout the entire customer lifecycle. Finally, they can build smarter and more empathetic and inclusive relationships with every customer, especially those facing greater financial vulnerability.
From disconnected, reactive operations to intelligent revenue operations
The shift from reactive collections to a more intelligent, proactive, and customer-centric approach through intelligent revenue operations is no longer a future vision. This has become a business priority for utilities seeking to protect cash flow in an increasingly complex operating environment. However, achieving this transformation requires far more than deploying AI or automating isolated tasks.
The real transformation happens when billing, metering, customer service, CX, field operations, and financial management stop operating as disconnected worlds and begin working as a single, connected operation. One source-of-truth that can anticipate risk, automate decisions, engage customers with the level of financial empathy each situation requires, and act before revenue is lost.
How Smartflex enables intelligent revenue operations
Smartflex is Open’s unified platform designed specifically for the utilities of the future. Unlike traditional architectures built on multiple disconnected solutions, Smartflex natively unifies billing, customer management, field work, meter data, CX, AI, and advanced analytics on a single, unified data model.
By operating on a single business logic and a single source of truth, information remains synchronized and natively connected across every business process, eliminating data silos, latency, and operational inconsistencies that can lead to rework and revenue leakage. This becomes even more critical as utilities adopt increasingly complex rate structures, distributed energy resources, and advanced metering programs that require every operational process to remain fully synchronized.
In addition, this architecture eliminates a minimum of 14 integration points across core customer operations systems, reducing integration maintenance costs to zero. For a utility serving one million customers, those integration costs alone can exceed USD $1.2 million annually. Built on this foundation, Smartflex enables utilities to implement a true intelligent revenue operations model by combining embedded AI, configurable business rules, intelligent workflows, and unified data to optimize every stage of the revenue lifecycle.
Smartflex delivers this through four key capabilities:
1. Embedded AI to predict, automate, and orchestrate the revenue recovery lifecycle
The AI in Smartflex isn’t a bolt-on module or an external layer; it’s embedded into the core of the platform through Alexandria, Open’s AI engine, which continuously predicts risk, automates decisions, and executes intelligent actions across the entire revenue lifecycle.
Alexandria predicts the risk of default before the bill’s due date by analyzing payment behavior, debt age, customer type, location, past payment agreements, and other operational variables to accurately identify which customers are most likely to miss a payment. A U.S. utility that implemented Smartflex and redesigned its collections process using intelligent segmentation successfully recovered 88% of residential debt during the preventive phase, compared to just 1% recovered during the disconnection phase. Anticipating risk not only boosts collections but also significantly cuts the operational costs associated with late-stage recovery.
Smartflex automates the entire collections lifecycle through intelligent workflows that segment delinquent accounts based on demographic, financial, and operational criteria. Additionally, it prioritizes collection strategies, generates service disconnect orders, and automatically orchestrates collection activities, eliminating manual back-office processes. After implementing Smartflex, a Latin American utility eliminated 100% of the manual effort required to analyze, prioritize, and assign collection activities, reduced unassigned disconnect orders from 53% to 22%, recovered 5% of accounts pending service suspension, and achieved full payment on 11% of those accounts.
Embedded AI also orchestrates process execution in real time. Every stage of the debt negotiation cycle is connected through configurable rules that determine when to escalate, when to approve automatically, and when to trigger an alert. Therefore, the platform acts the moment a consumption anomaly or a payment agreement at risk is detected, without waiting for a supervisor to intervene. A water utility that fully digitized its suspended-premises review with Smartflex recovered 6% of total delinquent accounts under suspension with fraudulent reconnection risk, directly improving the effectiveness of its recovery strategy.
2. Intelligent payment plans
Not every customer faces the same financial reality. In the United States, one in six households is behind on utility bills, with approximately $23 billion in outstanding utility debt [1]. Against this backdrop, utilities increasingly need to balance revenue collection objectives with greater financial empathy. Smartflex provides configurable business rules that enable utilities to offer payment options tailored to each customer’s financial situation, supporting a empathetic approach without compromising collection performance.
Payment plans, including amortization methods, installment schedules, interest rates, grace periods, and early payment incentives, can be configured natively, eliminating custom development and accelerating decision-making.
To ensure these options reach customers at the right moment, Smartflex provides omnichannel digital communications capabilities that make personalized payment agreements immediately available through a customer self-service portal. Customers can review outstanding balances, select payment plans aligned with their financial circumstances, and manage their agreements without visiting a customer service office or calling the contact center. This reduces customer effort while empowering customers to take control of their financial obligations.
The platform also automates post-payment actions, such as instantly canceling pending service disconnect orders when customers resolve their outstanding balances before field execution. As a result, one energy utility operating with Smartflex avoided nearly USD $800,000 in unnecessary field dispatch costs within just three months by eliminating truck rolls for disconnects that were no longer required. In another implementation, 37% of all payment agreements were completed entirely through the self-service portal, reducing contact center workload while delivering a faster, more convenient digital customer experience.
3. Revenue assurance
Smartflex protects revenue at the source, not just after a debt has already occurred. The key is ensuring data quality and consistency from the moment information is captured, as well as throughout field operations and metering activities. Whether a utility relies on traditional or advanced metering, Smartflex centralizes operational data in real time and digitizes meter reading, inspections, and field service activities. This improves process visibility, reduces transcription errors, captures photographic evidence of every field visit, and enables utilities to identify inconsistencies before they affect billing accuracy or revenue.
Built on this trusted data foundation, Smartflex applies configurable business rules that establish expected consumption thresholds based on customer type and service zone. When a meter reading falls outside those parameters, whether due to unusually high consumption, consecutive estimated reads, or inconsistent data entered by a field technician, the platform automatically generates an alert that triggers an intelligent workflow. This workflow coordinates the investigation, analysis, and resolution process, while proactively keeping customers informed with proactive notifications, ultimately preventing issues from becoming billing errors, customer disputes, or revenue loss.
These revenue assurance capabilities also identify unauthorized connections, and consecutive estimated meter reads in real time, without waiting for the billing cycle to close. As a result, one utility using Smartflex reduced estimated meter reads to 1.03%, outperforming the industry benchmark of 3%, while lowering valid billing complaints to just 0.11%. Fewer errors at the source translate directly into fewer revenue losses downstream.
4. Empathetic customer financial engagement
An effective revenue recovery strategy begins with understanding each customer’s financial circumstances before taking action. Increasingly, utilities are strengthening their digital engagement channels as part of a financially empathetic strategy, enabling customers to manage payments, payment agreements, and service requests without having to visit a customer service office. Smartflex combines embedded AI, dynamic customer segmentation, configurable business rules, and digital channels to recommend personalized payment agreements, expand self-service capabilities, and provide tailored financial options that strengthen customer financial engagement while improving operational efficiency. One utility that implemented Smartflex increased electronic payments by 68%, reduced monthly billing complaints by 57%, and achieved 49% adoption of its customer self-service portal as the primary customer interaction channel, improving both the customer experience and operational performance.
Beyond internal operations, Smartflex also integrates with government agencies and nonprofit organizations, streamlining customer assistance programs management so eligible customers can access financial support more quickly. At the same time, self-service capabilities make it easier for customers to manage payment commitments with less effort and greater collaboration. One Smartflex client implemented a financial assistance program in partnership with a nonprofit organization, using intelligent customer segmentation and automation to identify eligible customers and manage the program efficiently. As a result, 100% of customers who applied for assistance received financial support, strengthening community relationships while reducing financial risk.
By combining customer intelligence, flexible payment options, external collaboration, and automation, Smartflex helps utilities reduce service disconnections, improve collections performance, and build stronger customer trust, all on a single unified platform.
Beyond a platform, a strategy for revenue management
The Intelligent revenue operations model is redefining how utilities manage debt. The focus is no longer limited to recovering overdue accounts, it is about anticipating risk, automating decisions, and protecting revenue throughout the entire customer lifecycle.
With Smartflex, utilities turn this strategy into an operational capability. By combining embedded AI, automation, and a unified platform, they can reduce revenue leakage, accelerate revenue recovery, and strengthen customer financial engagement, all while operating from a single source of truth and a fully connected business platform. In an environment where revenue can be lost long before a bill becomes overdue, utilities can no longer afford to rely on reactive collection strategies.
How much longer will utilities continue managing revenue recovery reactively instead of protecting it throughout the entire customer lifecycle? Discover, together with one of our experts, how to implement an intelligent revenue operations model tailored to your utility’s unique needs, helping you protect revenue, optimize collections, and strengthen more empathetic financial relationships with your customers.
References
[1] Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI). How Low-Income Customer Programs Lower Energy Costs for Everyone.https://rmi.org/resources/how-low-income-customer-programs-lower-energy-costs-for-everyone/
