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SUPERION – Sales Playbook

o Offer alternative methods of receiving and paying utility bills including email, internet, cash
deposit, direct debit, postal service
▪ Electronic bill presentment and payment
▪ Recurring credit card payment
▪ Recurring ACH payment

Definitions

Prepaid Accounts/Meters – with a traditional credit-based home utility account, you use power to cool and
light your home and then receive a bill for what you owe. Many utilities, if you have poor credit or are a
new customer, require you pay a security deposit to obtain service. With a prepaid account you buy credits
that are applied to your account. You spend down the balance, and then buy more when your account gets
low. Typically you don’t pay a security deposit to obtain service since you’re paying for the energy up front.

Smart Meter – a traditional meter keeps an ongoing record of how much of a metered commodity (i.e. gas,
water, electricity) you home uses. The meter is read once a month/quarter and you’re billed for the
amount you’ve used since the last meter read. In order to read, connect and/or disconnect a traditional
meter requires field personnel to visit the physical meter.

A smart meter is a meter that allows remote, two-way communication between the meter and the utility. A
smart meter automatically records consumption of a service (i.e. water, gas, electricity) in intervals of an
hour or less and communicates that information at least directly back to the utility for monitoring and
billing purposes. Smart meters can be read, connected and disconnected remotely via the advanced
metering infrastructure (AMI).

Automatic Metering System (AMR) – is the technology of automatically collecting consumption, diagnostic
and status data from metering devices (i.e. water, gas and electric) and transferring that data to a central
database for billing, troubleshooting and analyzing. This technology mainly saves utility providers the
expense of periodic trips to each physical location to read a meter. Another advantage is that billing can be
based on ear real-time consumption rather than on estimates based on past or predicted consumption.
AMR technologies included handheld, mobile and network technologies based on telephony platforms
(wired and wireless), radio frequency (RF), or power line transmission.

Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) – is an integrated system of smart meters, communication
networks, and data management systems that enables two-way communication between utilities and
customers.

Meter Data Management System (MDM/MDMS) – an MDM system performs long-term data storage and
management for the vast quantities of data delivered by smart metering systems. This data consists
primarily of reading and usage data that are imported from the head end servers that manage the data
collection in Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) or Automatic Meter Reading (AMR) systems. An MDD
system will typically import the data, then validate, cleanse and process it before making it available for
billing and analysis.

Smart Meter Integration – integrating smart meter data into customer billing systems. Superion’s Smart
Metering module provides two-way communication between the Utility Billing System and the MDM for

3/8/2018

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