How to Double Recurring Revenue Through Energy Analytics

Benefits of Energy Analytics for Businesses

Wattics is excited to announce the launch of our new series of webinars, which will cover all you need to know to be competitive within your market.

Our first webinar was about doubling recurring revenue through energy analytics, covering the topics below:

Why Consultants Should Use SaaS Energy Analytics
The Top Benefits of Energy Analytics
Why All That Glitter is not Gold?
Necessary Features of Energy Analytics Platforms

A summary of the webinar is given below, but you can also watch the whole recording at the following link:

Watch now

Energy analytics systems are crucial for energy consultants; however, specifically software as a service (SaaS) energy analytics allow for a competitive edge. According to a recent Siemens Report [1], monitoring and targeting systems are the number one solution to deliver the fastest return on investment for energy efficiency projects. The payback time for consultants estimates approximately 3 months. The report indicates that typically, the ability to measure and monitor real time key performance indicators allows a company to highlight problems and identify quick payback options. Typically, this will show 3-10% of the entire utility spent can be limited by using low cost solutions.

Around the world, there is a trend of increased searches for energy analytics, smart meters, and utility analytics that indicates that more businesses want to minimize consumption because minimizing energy costs affect the bottom line. Corporate responsibility has also become a major factor in differentiating companies. Engagement programs and the introduction of sustainability strategies has led to 1 in 3 of 2015 host companies working on clean energy projects according to an EDF climate corps report [2].

• Energy management software has the capability to collect the necessary data and give visibility to a substantial amount of energy consumption data at various sites
• Analytics promotes data driven decision making that can lead to operating cost and energy consumption reductions
• In addition to demonstrating waste behavior, such systems can highlight energy savings after the implementation of energy efficiency measures
• Cloud based energy analytics platforms provide adaptable tools to streamline energy efficiency projects compared to widely adopted spreadsheet based alternatives
• Analytics facilitates the process of data collection, integrating high frequency data streams from metering hardware and straightforwardly incorporating additional information that is needed to build a well correlated model and automatically quantify savings
• Team cooperation when working on energy efficiency projects can be enhanced with respect to spreadsheet calculations
• Measurement and verification capability seems to be of particular interests as the number of efficiency projects based on actual measured values and not on deemed savings is steadily growing
• Energy analytics allows for up to 95% customer retention rate with the differentiating offer of products and services as energy analytics can support solutions provided by consultants
• Energy analytics also creates a profitable, ensured and predictable recurring revenue stream

Energy analytics platforms are difficult to develop, especially if you want to effectively drive smart information and provide notifications and alerts. Such platforms require a multidisciplinary team and significant investment. If this system is not properly developed or maintained, this can damage a client relationship. The necessity to build the right functions to meet customer needs and expectations proves a significant on-going cost as the cloud servers need to be updated and maintained. It may not be worth investing the time and money to build infrastructure in-house with fewer than 30,000 meter points. However, at this point looking to an outside firm such as Wattics that has already built such an infrastructure may be useful in order to still be able to benefit from an energy analytics system.

Some key features energy managers need to incorporate or look for in a system:

• Provide an edge with certification, project management features, integrate energy efficiency project management and need to comply with international performance code
• Automated and consistent analysis across organizations without Excel sheets saving both time and man hours to reduce cost
• Being on top of billing and reporting by having information when it matters
• Trend analysis to compare energy use over time and against others
• An alert system to notify as soon as abnormal energy use is detected
• Transparency into ongoing energy efficiency projects for trust and conflict resolution
• Awareness of the platform throughout staff to instill change and long-term engagement
• Eligibility for energy compliance and recognition awards such as the ISO 50001 and Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED)
• What-if analysis before agreeing in capital project investment

Some key features energy consultants need to incorporate or look for in a system:

• Tailored plans according to needs of the clients such as different features of the dashboard enabled and charging based on number of meter points
• Total independence of use, admin users, create/delete meter point, set customer access right
• Pay per use as annual payments are inappropriate with client needs changing month by month
• A white label platform meaning the use of company colors, contact details, notifications sent from consultant email address, login from company website, etc., that allows for increased brand awareness and differentiation
• Innovating analytics that are engaging and secure as features get obsolete quickly so consistent new features are a must
• Boost user engagement by identifying active users and customer relationship management integration
• Security, specifically HTTPs use, is important as you are likely handling sensitive company information
• Hardware agnosticity is necessary in terms of technical support and the ability to work with virtually any meter type and frequency
• Automated commissioning is important in terms of plug and play capabilities that allow for easy installation and operation

 

These broad key features are necessary, but can be difficult to attain without the proper support. Therefore, by seeking external energy management platforms such as Wattics, consultants, energy managers and utilities alike can prosper from the benefits of energy management software for energy analytics.

Wattics is the #1 truly white label analytics platform to enable consultants and suppliers to differentiate offering, boost satisfaction and generate a steady recurring revenue from energy analytics.

To keep up with information about the next webinar and register when it is announced, be sure to follow our social media accounts which are linked at the top right of the page.

To keep the conversation going about this topic you can also check out and contribute to our energy learning community at https://www.wattics.com/.

Sources outside of webinar:
[1] https://w3.siemens.co.uk/home/uk/en/aboutus/Documents/Top10_energy_saving%20options_0911UK.pdf
[2] https://edfclimatecorps.org/sites/edfclimatecorps.org/files/casestudy/scaling-success.pdf