OREANDA-NEWS. August 3, 2007. It was two years on 1 August since branch offices of Integrated Settlement Centre LLC (part of IES-Holding) had started operating in the Sverdlovsk Region and the Perm Territory. Igor Babkin, Director of ISC's branch in Yekaterinburg, and Lyubov Chumachenko, Director of the Perm branch, held a joint press conference where the main subject was transparency of settlements in the public utilities sector as a guarantee of stability of energy supplies to households in winter. 

It was noted at the press conference that the problem of improving the efficiency of the collection of payments for consumed energy resources is very important, particularly on the threshold of a new heating season. For everyone suffers because of the imperfection of the payment collection chain between the subscriber and the power supplying organisation. In some towns in the region, service providers are still paid on a leftover basis, while money collected from households is spent to solve other issues in the town. Power companies cannot collect their monies in full, as they "settle down" in management organisations.  Accordingly, they lack money to repair power equipment. Ordinary consumers who regularly pay their bills thus also turn out to be unprotected against interruptions in energy supply. 

In those towns in the Sverdlovsk Region and the Perm Territory where Integrated Settlement Centre offices operate, it has been possible to avoid such situations. At present, ISC operates in 36 towns in the Sverdlovsk Region where it services 490,000 subscribers. Among the key partners of the company are Integrated Power Sales Company, Sverdlovenergosbyt, Sverdlovsk Utility Systems, and Territorial Generation Company No. 9. In the Perm Territory, OJSC ISC-Prikamie provides billing services and collects payments in 16 towns and districts, servicing in excess of 330,000 personal accounts. One important stage in OJSC ISC-Prikamie's development was its entry to the market of billing services in the city of Perm in July 2007. In the regional centre, the company began to provide billing services for management companies and condominiums.

Two years ago, when the company was established, it was hard to start the business, according to Mr Babkin. Town governments were unwilling to transfer the functions of calculating payment for energy resources to an "outsider" organisation. However, the company managed to prove the efficiency of its work, for ISC's key principles are transparency of payments and a proprietary software product ensuring that payments are made on time. All monies received from consumers of utility services are transferred to the accounts of service providers without delay. As a result, power supplying organisations get their money, the town government has complete information about collected and transferred funds, and consumers/payers can make use of convenient payment conditions.

At the moment, ISC seeks to become a "one-stop-shop" for its consumers for a subscriber to be able to pay all utility services in one place. Moreover, in cooperation with Sberbank the company intends to launch a project to make it possible for Sverdlovsk Region residents to pay public utilities anywhere in the region. For example, a resident of Berezovsky will be able to pay his or her bill in the bank's offices in Yekaterinburg.

Those ISC subscribers who actively use the Internet will soon have an opportunity to pay public utilities online. A relevant pilot project is currently being implemented in Perm, according to Ms Chumachenko. Then the innovation will spread over the entire territory where ISC operates, including the Sverdlovsk Region. The ISC website will go live in August where the subscriber will be able to obtain all the information he or she needs about the current tariffs, amounts charged, etc. In addition, the subscriber will be able to use the website to send his or her electricity meter readings, so the controller will not have to go round subscribers every month and read their meters anymore. Verifying the correctness of the information once in several months will be quite enough.