Dive Brief:

• A utilities expense management solution that government agencies and large enterprises have been using to simplify their management of multiple utility accounts is being made available to the general public, MetTel said Tuesday in a release. 
• The platform can validate charges, identify invoice variances, process payments to prevent late fees and provide real-time visibility into use through a portal, the company says. The U.S. General Services Administration, or GSA, the real estate management arm for the federal government, has been an early user of the platform, MetTel said. 
• "Organizations across government and commercial sectors struggle with decentralized utility management, creating significant operational inefficiencies," Don Parente, vice president of sales and solution architecture for the public sector at MetTel, said in a statement. "Our UEM solution provides a single source of truth that eliminates redundancies, identifies billing errors, and delivers immediate savings through streamlined workflows and automated validation.”

Dive Insight:

GSA has been using the platform to gather, load, validate and pay invoices on approximately 3,400 accounts with 800 utility vendors, MetTel said. GSA then provides the UEM-generated consumption data to the U.S. Department of Energy for compliance purposes. 

The UEM portal manages an additional $190 million in utility and telecom spending for another federal agency, which captured $8 million in savings over two years, the company says, “with comparable efficiency gains for commercial clients.” MetTel didn’t identify the agency. 

MetTel said that managing multiple accounts with its UEM portal can turn utility processes into a strategic asset in five ways: 1) intelligent invoice management, 2) advanced AI-driven anomaly detection, 3) cost visualization, 4) automated payment and 5) continuous optimization. 

“The amount organizations spend on energy and utilities is staggering," Lori Thomas, senior vice president of strategic engagement and transformation for MetTel, said in a statement. 

On average, the company says, the system flags issues like water leaks on one-third of all accounts per month. That kind of visibility enables organizations to make repairs and save hundreds of thousands of dollars in excess charges, the company says. 

The platform can connect with an organization’s financial systems and its security measures are NIST-aligned, the company says. 

Agencies and other enterprise customers are handling more than $40 million in monthly utility spend using the platform, MetTel says. The solution is now being made available to organizations other than agencies and enterprise customers.  

"I've seen enterprises managing over 2,000 utility vendors nationwide,” Thomas said. “Our UEM solution has transformed their operations, not only helping them control runaway costs but also providing the visibility needed to meet increasingly important sustainability objectives that our customers are prioritizing."