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As industries begin to recover from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, people can’t help but admire the role digital transformation played in keeping businesses functional and services running throughout lockdowns and stringent quarantines.
E-commerce and contact-less payments thrived, and remote work became as easy and accessible as the office. If there was an App for anything before the pandemic, there’s an App for everything now.
The pandemic also gave us at KarmSolar the opportunity to explore just how effective digital tools and solutions can be for optimizing our own processes as well as our commercial offering and clients’ experience partnering with KarmSolar. We began taking a closer look at all our solutions and operations and seeing just how much value we can add through digitalization.
Digital transformation in KarmSolar remained a project within our R&D Team for years, and in late 2021 the first official milestone was reached by establishing the Digital Transformation Department. The team is led by KarmSolar veteran and iFix co-founder Mohamed Fayez and also includes formerR&D team member Alaa Saber.
One of the first projects the Digital Transformation team have been working on is the KarmSolar Urban Power Distribution App.
As mentioned on our website, one of our key solutions is Urban Power Distribution. In a Power Distribution Solution, KarmSolar invests in, manages, and operates the electricity infrastructure of malls and commercial developments, and handles tenants’ electricity billing.
A preliminary insight was that the process of client billing was traditional and cumbersome. ThePower Distribution team would have to read every single tenant’s meter (over400+ tenants per development), calculate and print out paper bills, and physically distribute the invoice to each tenant. A tedious and inefficient process.
We decided we wanted to digitize this process by developing our own Distribution App, with a few key features that are guaranteed to make both ours and our clients’ lives easier:
Perhaps the core of our digitalization, A Smart Meter records the tenant’s electricity use just like a traditional meter, but actually transmits the data live to KarmSolar. We can then gather more insights on our client’s electricity behavior and optimize our solution to their needs. Tenants also get access to a dashboard through the Distribution App where they can track their consumption and other features. Smart Meters work either post-paid or prepaid, whichever the tenant prefers, and in both cases any payment transaction can be done online through the app.
This module refers to the Tenant’s Financing Program, a service that is currently exclusively available to Arkan Plaza tenants. Shops, offices, and restaurants in Arkan Plaza can now unlock up to 3M EGP in financing. Approvals and limits are calculated using a unique behavioral scoring system that rates tenants according to energy consumption-specific data such as electricity loads and bill payment habits.
Tenants can apply for financing through the Distribution App and have access to the funds in as little as 7 days! That’s one of the fastest financing solutions available in Egypt!
Learn more about the Tenants Financing Program in partnership with EFG Hermes.
Other entities working on the premises such as cleaning or maintenance agencies can also bill the tenants through the Distribution App and have the whole transaction fulfilled online, as opposed to billing each client individually, manually.
This feature basically allows tenants to pay off all their utility bills via the App. This makes it much easier for both the tenants and the utility provider; whether it’s water, gas, phone, etc., as it digitizes all future billings between both entities.
Fayez and Alaa have a lot in store for KarmSolar. Our objective is to become the first fully digitized multi-utility enterprise in the region by offering our clients renewable energy and utility solutions that are tech-enabled, data-backed, and future-proof.
Watch our space for more news from our tech wizzes!
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