When Customer Billing Can’t Keep Up, Clean Energy Can’t Scale

Turning Complex Billing Into a Foundation for Energy Transition

SUMMARY

As utilities navigate the energy transition, billing systems have become a critical—but often underestimated—lever for change. A major PNW utility partnered with Tamazari to modernize its complex billing capabilities, enabling time-varying rates, distributed energy resources (DERs), EV programs, and community solar initiatives. What began as a technical necessity evolved into a transformation of how the utility delivers customer-centric energy programs at scale.

CLIENT BACKGROUND

The client is a large regional utility serving millions of customers across Washington state. Like many utilities nationwide, they operated on a heavily customized SAP ECC billing environment—reliable, but increasingly strained by new regulatory requirements, clean energy programs, and customer expectations. Simply put, this leading utility needed a billing platform that could keep pace with both innovation and compliance.

CHALLENGE

Our client faced mounting pressure to deliver new rate structures and clean energy programs on top of an aging SAP ECC billing system. Furthermore, multiple regulatory-driven and customer-facing initiatives needed to launch in parallel, despite limited specialized billing resources and highly siloed teams. Treating these efforts as isolated IT tickets increased risk, slowed delivery, and strained internal capacity, making it clear that a coordinated, program-level approach was required to modernize billing.

“There were multiple rate changes that all needed to happen simultaneously—with the same resources.”

Taylor Crose, Principal Project Manager

SUCCESS CRITERIA

Success was defined not just by launching programs, but by doing so sustainably.

• Support complex, customer-facing rate programs without increasing operational risk

• Enable DER, EV, and solar programs aligned with grid needs and equity goals

• Improve customer experience while maintaining regulatory compliance

• Create a repeatable delivery model for future initiatives

• Reduce strain on internal IT and billing teams

SOLUTION

Tamazari established a centralized complex billing program that unified governance, prioritization, and delivery across more than 50 stakeholders and dozens of concurrent initiatives. The approach blended program management discipline with Six Sigma process improvement, ensuring every initiative answered a core question: Why does this matter—to customers, the grid, and the utility?

Key elements included:

• Unified program governance across SAP, billing, and product teams

• An integrated master schedule aligning code changes, testing, and deployments

• Standardized release cycles with consistent readiness criteria

• Value-based prioritization grounded in regulatory need and customer impact

  
  

This shifted billing modernization from reactive execution to intentional transformation.

“We launched what was needed, when it was needed—and we did it cross-functionally.”

Taylor Crose, Principal Project Manager

IMPLEMENTATION

From 2022 to 2024, Tamazari led end-to-end delivery within SAP ECC. Work was sequenced through an integrated master schedule covering design, testing, and deployment, with close coordination across SAP, Powerclerk, and internal PM tools. This approach enabled continuous delivery of complex billing programs while modernizing legacy logic and reducing operational risk.

LONG-TERM VALUE

The greatest value lies in institutional change. Our client adopted a new standard for delivering billing-driven innovation—moving away from ad hoc IT requests toward structured, customer-centered programs. This reduced operational risk, improved forecasting and budgeting, and positioned the utility to respond faster to regulatory and market shifts.

Most importantly, the work supports broader societal goals: equitable access to clean energy, smarter grid utilization, and billing structures that make sustainability attainable for customers.

“At the end of the day, it’s about what customers want and what actually benefits them.”

Taylor Crose, Principal Project Manager

KEY LEARNINGS

• Billing systems are critical infrastructure, not a simple back-office operation

• DER and electrification programs succeed or fail at the billing layer

• Program governance is essential when innovation outpaces resourcing

• Value-based prioritization aligns regulatory, customer, and grid outcomes

• Modernization does not always require replacement—sometimes it requires rethinking how work gets done

  
  

This case demonstrates that when billing modernization is done thoughtfully, it becomes a catalyst for trust, transparency, and long-term energy transformation.

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