In the spring of 2025, Hoosier Energy began a billing assessment operation, guided by 1898 and Co.
The goal was to examine the Hoosier Energy billing process from start to finish.
âWe sort of refer to it as the cash register of the company, but what it boils down to is weâve got 600 meters across our system capturing data tied to all delivery points to members,â said Will Kaufman, Hoosier Energyâs Vice President of Power Supply and Risk Management. âBilling touches every aspect of our organization, from meters to meter techs to substations and flows through system control, finance, operations, IT, etc. It has tentacles through our entire organization.â
The billing team, in particular, has long been what Kaufman calls the âneurocenterâ of the process. But as the process and the people involved in it have changed over time, it was clear that Hoosier Energy would benefit from mapping the process and optimizing it for the future.
Efforts to do just that began with a kickoff and discovery workshop session followed by stakeholder sessions with over 30 employees representing billing, economic development, IT, asset management, system control, power markets, safety, member solutions and finance. By the time the final report was issued, approximately 45 employees participated in stakeholder sessions with over 200 hours of meetings.
Those sessions were facilitated remotely with software that allowed participants to place Post-It Note responses to questions to identify and capture information.
âThe 1898 team could then comb through all those comments to understand what the current state looked like and find opportunities to improve,â Kaufman said.
The findings were divided into categories: operational, financial, technology and automation.
Meanwhile, the study of the billing process revealed approximately 350 bills generated each month, including custom reports and other requests.
âIt was a very open and collaborative process to identify pinch points, challenges and highlight things we do well,â Kaufman said. âWe needed to be able to go forward with changes to create an ideal future state of billing, and this is helping to develop a roadmap to get there and optimize the process.â
Recommendations included hiring a billing manager, which came to fruition in early January with the hire of Brady Abel as Manager of Billing and Revenue Cycle Management.
Others included updating billing software, leveraging technology and artificial intelligence in lieu of largely manual operations, and conducting an exercise to determine documentation and efficiency. These and other changes were designed to be implemented in stages over the next 18-plus months.
âAs we keep improving all these pieces, we can make sure everyone is on the same page with the different tasks that make up the billing process,â Kaufman said.