Calumo - Business Intelligence and Performance Management Blog

Automatic Meter Reading, or AMR, is the technology for automatically collecting data from energy metering devices (gas or electric) and transferring that data to a central database for billing and/or analyzing. This means that billing can be based on actual consumption rather than on an estimate based on previous consumption. It also eliminates the need for each meter to be visually read by a technician, thereby cutting personnel costs.

Advanced Metering Infrastructure, or AMI, is technology to capture additional data. This can include detection of technical events such as leaks, or reverse flow (reducing the chance of power emergencies and blackouts), but AMI is also used to collect time of use data that can be used for energy use profiling, time of use billing, demand forecasting, rate of flow recording, flow monitoring, etc.

EnergyAustralia call this PowerSmart which they (and others) are progressively implementing throughout their electricity networks. With traditional "flat" pricing, the price you pay for electricity is the same, no matter what time of day or night you use it (with the exception of customers who have special off peak meters and rates, usually for hot water). With PowerSmart, your electricity rates are broken down into three different time periods - Peak, Shoulder and Off Peak. This means you pay for how much electricity you use, based on when you use it. A higher rate is charged during the Peak period, than the Shoulder and Off Peak periods. So your rate is less when the demand for electricity is lower, and more when it is higher. This means you have greater control over your electricity bill. AMI makes it easier for you to keep track of your energy usage which can help you reduce your energy costs and you are provided with an incentive to reduce your energy usage.

Apart from the consumer benefits, AMR and AMI technology is also a completely new source of data for energy retailers to analyse. They could gain unprecedented insight into demand and usage patterns, which could in turn provide enormous business benefits.

For example, the wholesale electricity market is typically characterised by relatively tight supply with huge discrepancies between pre-purchased and real-time prices and the absence of a predictable short-term (e.g., hour-ahead or day-ahead) forward market. With the benefit of AMR and AMI analytics, markets will mature and get more competitive, the level of discrepancy between pre-purchased and real-time prices will narrow and become more sophisticated.

Large wholesale customers, who are also retail suppliers therefore have the best opportunity to exploit and respond to short-term demand. With their new found AMR and AMI analytics, their ability to respond within one hour, or even five minutes with favourable prices highlights the significant opportunity for large, sophisticated customers that will support wholesale market timing and pricing.

These benefits however are only available to those who can overcome the enormous data management and analytics challenges.

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For Retailers, the ever increasing diversity and fragmentation of consumer demographics requires that they analyse customer data at a very detailed, granular-level. They need rigorous timely processes to respond to demand signals and segment customers in a way that's superior to their competition.

By properly aggregating and analyzing retail transactions, that would otherwise offer little insight into the business, data can be transformed into actionable information that can increase sales and profitability, provide competitive advantage and deepen customer and vendor loyalty.

The availability of sophisticated (transactional) data poses the challenge to find a way to effectively harness and leverage massive volumes of data. SQL Server 2005 provides a platform for enterprise-class performance and scalability for analytical number crunching of this nature. Even for writeback, Microsoft claim enhancements to data writeback include a ten-fold performance improvement. With the advent of X64 Servers, these solutions are now even more affordable.

To find out more, about our retail capability, please visit our retail solutions page.

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We are often asked to explain what  BPM is and why it is so important compared to a non-integrated, non-unified approach to business intelligence, reporting, analytics, planning etc.

It struck me on seeing the image of the flock of birds below, that one way to answer this was to use pictures. As they say, a picture paints a thousand words.

The point of all the images that we’ve chosen is that patterns and meanings can be found and relationships and collaborations possible within the whole.

Nature, fractals, tessellations and origami are all fine illustrations of order out of apparent chaos. And so to with BPM, an organisation can gain greater insights through the observation of structures, relationships and patterns of the whole enterprise.

Fig 1: During spring in Denmark, flocks of more than a million European starlings gather in incredible formations such as shown above.

Fig 2: Origami tessellations take a simple crease pattern unit and repeat this across the paper. Example above by Alex Bateman (can you visualize the spiral pattern?).

Fig 3: Horocycle 4 - Knots and dynamics - A collaboration between Jos Leys and Prof. Etienne Ghys (hmm, reminds me of fishing with my dad).

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1. It must effect a measurable change in performance.
2. It needs to be applicable to a broad spectrum of organizations.
3. It should be proven in practice.
4. It needs to exploit proven technologies.
5. It must ensure an acceptable level of control and risk management.
6. It has to match the skills and capabilities of the companies in which it is used.

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1. Are you wrestling with poor information quality when making decisions?
2. Do your finance and business users spend a lot of time developing special reports?
3. Are you plagued with "multiple versions of the truth"?
4. Are your decision makers buried in too much information, unable to derive useful insights?
5. Is your Planning and budgeting information not realistic or is it outdated and has lost relevance relevance?

1. Better operating decisions faster.
2. Improved annual planning decisions.
3. Confidence in business process controls and reporting.
4. Improved decisions on strategic direction
5. Savings by reducing time users spend reworking information.
6. Reduce cost of complying with regulation and mitigate enterprise risk.

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