Utility cost analysis

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Utility Bill Analytics has organizational level cost analysis tools that include cost analysis dashboards and analytical reports.

Access the cost analysis dashboards from the organizational level Verify menu, or if you are a group level user, from the Cost submenu on the Group Summary page. Other analytical tools are available at a location or account level, for example, the performance dashboard.

You can use the cost analysis dashboard to do the following tasks:
  • Identify outliers, variations, and anomalies, for example, you can identify unusual data patterns in utility billing data, such as unusually high-cost intensity, material variations in utility rates or unexpectedly high costs or consumption. For each anomaly, you can drill down into consecutively greater detail, right through to bill images.
  • Rank and prioritize issues, for example, you can rank locations by severity of issues by using various criteria, for example, percentage variance. Therefore, you can focus on the anomalies that represent the greatest cost-saving opportunities.
The analysis is achieved through variance checking and then followed by peer benchmarking. It is based on normalized calendar month billing data, for both cost and consumption, and by using locations as the comparison entity. To start the analysis, first define the analyzing criteria:
Current Period
The time period over which the utility billing data is analyzed, for example, from Oct-2015 to Dec-2015
Comparison Period
The time period to be compared with, which might be the same time period last year, or just the previous time period for example, compare with last quarter
Account Styles
Whether the analysis is focused on all account styles or a selective account styles only, for example to look only at large market Electricity accounts
Groups
It is important to choose one or more groups that have locations of similar type to perform the analysis. If the locations involved are of different use in nature, for example, branch office compared to manufacturing factory, then the result of comparing them to each other might not be effective.

After you select the analyzing criteria from the user interface, the dashboard calculates the variance and absolute values for each location. The analysis result is displayed in bar charts so that any anomalies or outliers can easily be identified. The dashboard also provides a table view of all the data points being analyzed, from which you can rank and prioritize issues by using various criteria that suit your purpose for example, rank all locations by cost variance percentage.

Three cost analysis dashboards are available for each utility type, which are all similar. The only main difference between them is the type of utility data that is being analyzed:
  • Cost Analysis - Electricity
  • Cost Analysis - Natural Gas
  • Cost Analysis - Water
If you can't see all three dashboards available under the Cost menu, mostly likely it is because your IBM® ESG Suite data set does not contain the associated type of utility data, for example, no water data.