Manager - Commercial

A. About the Role:

We are seeking a skilled and experienced Commercial Expert in Electricity Distribution Business to provide comprehensive support to Power Distribution Utility in handling various day-to-day and routine commercial matters. The consultant will play a crucial role in enhancing the commercial performance of the business units and ensuring adherence to operational and commercial performance targets.

B. Job Responsibilities:

Commercial Performance Review:

• Monitor and review the commercial performance of business units (divisions, circles, zones) to meet operational and commercial targets, including AT&C loss reduction and ACS-ARR gap, as committed under distribution schemes like RDSS.
• Prepare Management Information System (MIS) formats and weekly performance reports for business units to enable effective review by Power Distribution Utility management.

Billing Efficiency Improvement:

• Develop strategies to improve billing efficiency, including evaluating the performance of billing agencies/agents, revising meter route plans, and implementing billing under smart metering/prepaid metering systems.
• Analyze billing coverage at the business unit level and devise strategies to enhance billing coverage.

Collection Efficiency Improvement:

• Formulate strategies to improve collection efficiency, such as deploying collection agencies, implementing collection under smart metering/prepaid metering, and strategizing to increase collection coverage.
• Conduct customer segmentation analysis to optimize collection efforts and identify areas for improvement.

Customer Segmentation Analysis:

• Analyze customer segmentation data to enhance billing and collection efforts, addressing issues like low load factor billing, insufficient billing coverage, door lock/average/provisional billing cases, and strategic meter replacement.

Communication Strategies:

• Collaborate with utility teams to develop effective communication strategies based on consumer behavior, cultural factors, and paying capacity to enhance metering, billing, and collection processes.

Coordination and Consultation:

• Coordinate with other consultants working on distribution sector schemes (e.g., RDSS) to ensure seamless integration of efforts.

Standardized Commercial Procedures:

• Review existing commercial procedures and processes, and develop standardized procedures incorporating industry best practices and latest technologies to optimize revenue and reduce customer complaints.
• Evaluate and optimize connection management, meter reading, billing & bill distribution, arrear recovery, collection management, theft detection & recovery, and other relevant processes.

Institutional Mechanisms:

• Propose institutional mechanisms to enhance metering, billing, and collection, such as establishing new business units, introducing new cells/departments, deploying Women Self-Help Groups (WSHGs), leveraging customer service cells, exploring public-private partnership initiatives, and other innovative approaches.

Other Operational and Commercial Matters:

• Provide suggestions and expertise on improving the operational and commercial performance of the DISCOM.

Standardized Information Flow:

• Devise and standardize formats for critical information flow related to the tasks to ensure efficient and consistent communication within the organization.

C. Required skill set

• Proven experience in handling commercial matters within the electricity distribution sector.
• Familiarity with distribution schemes in the energy industry.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills.
• Excellent communication and collaboration abilities.
• Ability to develop and implement effective strategies.
• Capacity to work independently and as part of a team.
• Flexibility to adapt to dynamic and evolving requirements.
• Strong interpersonal and Communication skills.
• Proficiency in MS Office (Word, Excel and Power point)

D. Education and Experience

• BE/B. Tech (preferably in Electrical) plus MBA (preferably in Power or Finance)
• Atleast 5 years of relevant experience