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‘Choice! Energy Management’ Announces Purchase Of Majority Stake In Online Platform ‘eAgent.Energy’

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‘Choice! Energy Management’ Announces Purchase Of Majority Stake In Online Platform ‘eAgent.Energy’

Latest Investment Will Diversify ‘Choice!’s’ Portfolio Of Technology Solutions For Energy Industry Professionals Nationwide

September 16, 2020 (Houston, TX) — Choice! Energy Management, a full-service energy procurement and utility management company, announces the purchase of the majority stake in the platform eAgent.Energy—a cloud-based solution for agents and consultants in the energy industry. With the addition of eAgent, energy industry professionals across the nation will gain access to an array of cutting-edge technology solutions that allow energy brokers, agents, and consultants to take their professional relationships and client experiences to the next level. Through this new business transaction with eAgent, Choice! Energy Management, with its pre-existing suite of energy management services supported by in-house facility intelligence solutions—including its signature Choice! Data Connect—will have further diversified its portfolio of high-tech offerings for clients.

“Within the energy industry, we find that many brokers offer expensive platforms that appear to have all the bells and whistles an agent would need, but in the end are ambiguous about what they are truly providing,” said Kiki Dikmen, CEO of Choice! Energy Management. “However, with eAgent, brokers can directly access suppliers to engage, facilitate, and execute electricity and natural gas contracts without the high platform price. At Choice! Energy Management, our company values a continuous commitment to technology and our new partnership with eAgent exemplifies that dedication.”

“We are grateful for the opportunity to work closely with Choice! Energy Management and to provide our energy solutions to their dedicated customer base,” said Paral “PA” Thakker, Managing Partner of eAgent. “This collaboration further propels our vision to deliver the utmost level of ease and transparency to industry professionals who choose to utilize eAgent for their procurement needs.”

The eAgent platform connects energy consultants, customers, and suppliers like never before through solutions that pair with artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities. The platform features a complete state-of-the-art pricing portal with customer relationship management (CRM) software, easy delivery of e-sign contracts for today’s contactless business world, and state of the art daily pricing features that allow users to track retail energy prices for customers at any time. Additionally, eAgent offers a one percent guarantee of the final contract price instead of a processing fee in any market, and for key partners, monthly licensed products are also available.

eAgent is now available for agents and clients as an application to download on iOS and Android devices.

For more information about Choice! Energy Management, visit getchoice.com. For more information on eAgent, visit www.eagent.energy.

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**Notes:

Financial details of the acquisition were not released.

 

Domo Arigato, Mr. Robotic Process Automation

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By: Matthew Mattingly

Styx Mr Roboto GIF from Styx GIFs

The term Robotic Process Automation may have a different definition depending on the person or reference.  To my wife, the term Robotic Process may conjure the image of a dance move that her husband does WAY TOO early and often at parties. However, we will not be talking about dance moves in this blog entry. Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is a new coming, game-changer in the utility bill management world. RPA is an automation tool that uses software bots to handle high-volume, repeatable, rule-based tasks (Insert Wikepedia definition). Our bill management software, Choice Data Connect, has been using RPA to help clients streamline the bill management process to extract invoices, organize data, and automate Accounts Payables. Clients are now getting their data faster and more accurate than ever before.  As we will further explain, the old bill management process is making way for the new. Domo arigato Mr. Robotic Process Automation!

Invoice Extraction – The Old Way

Utility bill management (UBM) programs have been around for years, but typically requires a manual process. The process involves changing billing addresses to a centralized location, paper invoices to be opened/scanned, and human interaction to physically monitor/input data. Although this UBM process does provide value in a centralized process, it still requires a time consuming and costly human touch. Human touch leads to human error, which leads to payment delays and billing errors.  Basically, people ruin everything, they are the worst.

Old Technology – OCR and EDI

Another complaint of UBM providers is aging technology. Many providers still rely on OCR (Optical Character Recognition) technology to view and extract data from scanned invoices. OCR can be helpful, but the process depends upon high resolution images of invoices and may have difficulty with poorly imaged scans.  Just think how many times you looked at a scanned invoice and wondered, is that an eight or a nine?  Heck maybe it’s a niner?  OCR technology will have the same issues. Additionally, OCR technology is could never accurately report the hand-written invoice sent by the rural county water department.

EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) is also a technology used by several UBM providers to receive utility invoices. EDI allows utility vendors to directly transmit data, providing a prompt and paperless delivery. BUUUUUT, there is a major flaw with EDI invoices and that is they are not the true invoice copies.  In fact, EDI invoices look more like binary code, making it impossible for someone to review and interpret cost and usage data from the file. See the example below.

New Way – Robotic Process Automation

Choice Energy Management takes invoice extraction to the next level.  By using Robotic Process Automation (RPA) our bill management team can DIGITALLY download over 80% of our client’s accounts. Software Bots take the place of human interaction and manual invoices, by pulling digital invoices directly from a supplier or utility portal.  The diagram below illustrates the process flow chart of the software bots within the utility/supplier portal.

Invoice Validation

As shown by the above diagram, our Robotic Process Automation doesn’t stop with invoice extraction. Invoice templates are created to extract ALL invoice data and import directly to Choice Data Connect. However, the data is not imported into Choice Data Connect unless it passes a 225+ audit checklist. Failure of the audit requires a Choice Data Analyst to review the invoice and data before submitting to Choice Data Connect.  This ensures all data within Choice Data Connect is 99.5% accurate. Basically, Lloyd Christmas has the same chance with Mary (Samsonite) Swanson as an invoice error of hitting Choice Data Connect.

Summary

Through leading technology (such as Robotic Process Automation), Choice Data Connect is taking utility bill management to the next level.  Our clients are now getting faster, more accurate data, all while having access to the true invoice copy. This is just the beginning for Choice Data Connect. In the next year, Choice plans to incorporate Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to reach our goal of having 100% digital invoices within Choice Data Connect. This will lead to even less human touch. In the meantime, we will celebrate the advances Robotic Process Automation has provided Choice Data Connect.  In fact, the lyrics of Styx’s 1983 #1 hit, Mr. Roboto may say it best.

Thank you very much, Mr. Robotic Process Automation
For doing the jobs that nobody wants to
And thank you very much, Mr. Robotic Process Automation
For helping me escape just when I needed to
Thank you, thank you, thank you
I want to thank you, please, thank you

Confidential: Choice Energy Services Retail, LP.

Independence Day: The Natural Gas Market

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via GIPHY

The only thing that could make 2020 more unbelievable would be massive alien saucers hovering over major US cities. COVID-19 continues to linger, election rhetoric is heating up, and NYMEX Natural Gas just broke the record for its LOWEST MONTHLY PRICE SETTLEMENT IN 25 YEARS. With the July contract settling at $1.495/MMBtu, preconceived notions about this market have been shattered, and we face the rest of 2020 with a high degree of uncertainty. Can Will Smith swoop in and end this alien-like hold the bearish fundamentals have on this market? To be determined, but what is certain is that this natural gas market is sending up fireworks of the likes never seen.

2020 was supposed to be the year of growth for all things natural gas. Growth expected on the demand side from electric power burn, liquefied natural gas (LNG) exportation, and pipeline exports to Mexico. Growth in production expected to make up for the new demand. Rather, what we have seen is a COVID-19 induced, massive decline in nearly every fundamental. LNG is down 70% from projections, production down 10% and industrial demand down almost 20% has given us a slowly balancing but still over-supplied market. This supply glut hangs over the global natural gas market like an ominous flying saucer and poses a serious financial risk to all that dare oppose it.

So, what of this pricing record? Last week we saw a massive injection of 120 BCF of natural gas into storage, exceeding expectations and all previous norms. This event, coupled with the fundamentals discussed, and moderating weather forecasts last week, pushed the NYMEX July contract to a low of $1.432 before settling last Friday at $1.495. This is the lowest settlement we have seen since the August 1995 contract that settled at $1.49 (a year before the cinematic classic we call Independence Day was released in theaters). These are price levels previously believed unreachable in our modern market. This bearish confluence of events has moderated, and we have now seen a rebound in the August contract to $1.70 on forecasts of a top 5 hottest July.

In many ways, the NYMEX Natural Gas market is a victim of its own success. The ability to quickly and cheaply produce natural gas has pushed producers to sell at rock-bottom prices. These market prices are unsustainable for long periods of time without irrational factors at play, but there has yet to be much rationality in the year 2020. In a way, maybe the crude 1990’s cinematography and plot line of aliens coming to harvest the earth for its natural resources is a believable analogy for this natural gas market. Will the market shake out by winter? We have our predictions, but for now, we are left waiting for the rest of this market/movie to unfold.

Confidential: Choice Energy Services Retail, LP.