Over our 40-year history, we have seen or heard about scenarios where an energy and sustainability ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) software vendor promises to deliver comprehensive functionality, only to fail to meet the customer&#;s requirements during the implementation stage. The solution (and the price) may have looked appealing at first glance, but if the client stakeholders would have taken a closer look, they might have recognized that the application was more flash than substance.
With competitive price and timely delivery, acrel sincerely hope to be your supplier and partner.
If you are in the market for an energy management and sustainability solution, you owe it to yourself and your organization to ask potential vendors some hard questions.
To get you started, here&#;s a list of questions we recommend you ask:
There&#;s a lot of venture capital floating around the energy management industry, but all that glitters is not gold. Startups have their place, but can they really provide the expertise and experience that you need to take your energy management program to the next level? Ensure that your ERP solution has a history of success in the industry. Follow up with references, and make sure to ask the questions that reflect your organizational priorities.
It is becoming increasingly important to measure, track, and minimize greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Providing a standardized and transparent approach to measuring an organization&#;s carbon footprint, which includes all the direct and indirect emissions associated with its activities, may likely be a key imperative for you and your organization. Even companies without sustainability goals will need to support carbon reporting requirements of their supply chain, so having a financial-grade carbon accounting system may be a good idea.
Electricity and Natural Gas commodities can have two vendors associated with them in deregulated markets. The producer of the commodity and deliverer of the commodity. The way these two vendors send you bills may include the same energy amounts (specially on the vendor doing the delivery for information). If your software does not recognize them as the same energy purchased, you will end up double counting your energy and carbon impact.
Analyzing a facility&#;s energy use pattern enables you to answer a variety of questions: Is my building turning on at the expected time each day? Are lights and other building systems setting back when they should be evening and on weekends? Are there any demand spikes that could be resulting in increased? Identifying resource saving opportunities and optimizing operations will help you better manage your projects and achieve savings for your clients. So, it may be handy to select an ERP that offers the ability to import, monitor, and analyze real-time energy data.
Many U.S. municipalities require that government and commercial entities report energy usage to the EPA on an annual basis to receive an ENERGY STAR score for each building they own. A software solution that offers an easy way to interface with ENERGY STAR&#;s Portfolio Manager would alleviate the need to double-enter data into your ERP and Portfolio Manager, simplifying benchmarking legislation requirements.
Many ERP vendors are willing to sell a legacy product with the full knowledge that their solution is not keeping pace with technological advances and energy industry changes. Make sure you understand your software vendor&#;s release schedule and development commitment for your specific solution. Verifying the vendor&#;s long-term viability is also important for your peace-of-mind. Start-up firms may claim to have, and even &#;demonstrate,&#; a lot of bells and whistles, but they often lack the experience required to provide a holistic solution or understand the energy management intricacies that are unique to your industry.
We&#;ve all had the unpleasant experience of speaking to a support representative who either couldn&#;t understand our questions or couldn&#;t answer them. Too many ERP vendors are willing to outsource customer service without outsourcing the expertise required to meet customer needs. Maybe it&#;s cheaper, but will it work for you or against you? Make sure that your solution provider has the bandwidth for timely technical support and customer success.
You invest heavily in retrofit projects, employee education, and other efforts to conserve energy, but how do you know that your efforts are yielding desired results? Make sure that your ERP vendor is conversant in the methods and processes for performing accurate and verifiable M&V calculations. Is your prospective solution compatible with commonly accepted assessment practices?
Many campus-type and multi-tenant organizations manage utility expenses through internal billing. The processes involved in calculating and allocating departmental or tenant energy costs can be complex. Check that your ERP can perform any necessary internal invoicing tasks using calculations based on data from your submeter network.
Utility data is the first step in your sustainability strategy, but how do you plan to get energy data into your ERP? How many years of historical data do you intend to migrate for benchmarking purposes? Your solution should be robust enough to handle a variety of migration options including manual data entry, flat file import, EDI, OCR, and bill image archiving. The goal is to spend less time getting data into the system and more time getting results out.
Verification of data is critical for energy management analysis. We all understand the phrase &#;garbage in, garbage out.&#; Make sure your ERP has a robust set of tools to ensure the accuracy of incoming data.
It&#;s safe to assume that you will encounter some billing or utility account issues along the way. What happens after they&#;re identified? You and your staff may not have time to research and resolve the issues. If that&#;s the case, make sure your vendor offers a service to do it for you.
Make sure that your chosen solution has the ability to address all interface issues. Don&#;t settle on a system that requires you to enter the same billing information again and again into multiple systems. It&#;s a recipe for error and inefficiency.
There are 15 business days left in the quarter, and your Accounting Department is demanding a quarterly utility expense report. What do you do?
Your energy management software should be able to help you fill in those awkward gaps at the end of the accounting period so that you can tell an accurate story regarding your energy use and cost. If accruals are important to you, make certain that your ERP can deliver.
Okay, that&#;s really two questions, but both related to the security of your organization&#;s data. It&#;s important to verify in advance that any potentially sensitive data&#;utility account numbers, employee names and addresses, accounting information&#;is stored in a secure environment. And remember: It&#;s your data. You should always retain ownership of the data and be able to export it from the ERP at any time.
If you are going to be contacting energy and sustainability software vendors for a direct purchase or evaluating RFP responses, these questions should help get you the answers you need. Navigate your purchase successfully and procure a product that will provide your organization with years of reliable utility bill accounting and valuable energy and sustainability insights.
8 Things You Need to Know About Energy Management Software
The right Energy Management System can help you gain visibility into your energy performance. With this insight, you can uncover many hidden savings opportunities.
To help you make an informed choice, this article highlights 8 things you should know when evaluating different solutions.
1. Intuitive data visualization
Data visualization forms an essential part of your data quality. Good data visualizations are clear and easy to understand. Ask for a demo and see if the visualizations convey useful information quickly and easily. Don&#;t be fooled by beautiful colours &#; you need information that informs action, not a painting for the wall!
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2. Actionable metrics
Put all data points to the &#;so what&#; test. My energy use yesterday was 100 kilowatt-hours &#; so what? What do I do next? Is that good, is that bad? Was there a particular area with a problem? A particular time of day? Has this problem occurred in the past?
Even comparisons can be misleading. You may have used 10% more energy than last month, but those two months had different temperatures, number of days, and holiday schedules.
There&#;s too much noise to tell whether that&#;s good or bad without deeper analysis. Don&#;t get a system that leaves you with more questions than answers. Make sure that you&#;re getting software that provides you with all the information you need to take confident action.
3. Flexible & robust reporting
Anyone can put a title and a graph on a page and call it a report. But is it really delivering the right conclusion, clearly, briefly, and in terms that the target audience can understand? Too many reports are siloed into specific topics, when all you want is a single report to show your energy performance for the month.
Other reports are so inflexible that you can&#;t highlight key points or remove distracting information. This puts you at risk of management confusion and disappointment. You need reports that give you the full picture and give you flexibility over what you can include.
4. Active outreach
You&#;re busy, and that means you won&#;t always have time to spend looking through your energy data, no matter how beautiful and intuitive the graphs are. You need a system that will reach out to you at the right time to let you know when there&#;s a problem, or when you have a new progress report ready.
A system that will communicate with you will relieve you of the burden of constant checking.
5. Platform accessibility
Effective energy management requires participation across multiple departments and locations. That means accessibility is key for quick and effective communication. On-site servers, limits on the number of users, and inflexible access settings can inhibit the effectiveness of your energy management system.
Cloud systems are accessible anywhere, even by mobile. Flexible access settings give you the confidence to grant access without worrying about sharing confidential information with the wrong people. Make sure the right people can access the system at the right time, or you&#;ll end up with the full burden on your own hands!
6. Hardware compatibility
Consider each platform&#;s capability to work with your existing energy data. Platforms that can integrate with almost any hardware are the most cost-effective and future-proof options in the market.
Don&#;t get stuck with hardware-specific platforms that require extra cost to purchase specific (and sometimes redundant) metering devices.
7. Updates & new features
Software and analytics capabilities are always evolving, and good vendors are always working hard to improve their systems. Unfortunately, many vendors ask you to pay for these improvements, whether it&#;s a new version or a new widget.
Make sure that you&#;ll automatically upgrade at no cost to benefit from the latest features, or you&#;ll end up with excessive long-term costs.
8. Track record
Look for each vendor&#;s customer success track record, particularly in your own industry or sector. Have they been helping clients achieve solid improvements in energy efficiency and productivity?
Ask for customers&#; testimonials, or better still, ask to speak to their customers whenever possible.
En-trak is an award-winning proptech IoT company. We design and sell cloud-based solutions to help enterprises manage and optimize their energy consumption. Our flagship solution En-trak&#; Energy enables users to know where, when and how they are using energy in real-time.
With continuous monitoring and advanced analytics, we&#;ve helped over 350+ world-class clients including Hong Kong Stock Exchange, National Environmental Agency, and Fuji Xerox achieve their sustainability goals. We&#;ve also recently launched our brand-new, patented En-trak&#; Smart Lighting solution designed to help companies and building owners to automate and optimize their office lights.
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