| | December 201619CIOReviewChoice Energy ServicesTechnology-enabled Energy ManagementStarting as a typical energy brokerage shop that helped clients find best commodity retail price, Choice Energy Services has evolved into a smart, large-scale energy management service company that provides its clients with much more. According to Kiki Dikmen, Managing Partner, "We look at ourselves not as an energy procurement company, but as a technology-driven solutions company that happens to be highly focused on energy and utilities." From power and gas to water, steam and trash, Choice Energy Services doesn't just help its clients with the buying of commodities, but it offers an active and intuitive expense management approach using its uniquely designed proprietary platform--CESConnect. "We have taken a lean back approach with our software because we don't want customers to have to fish for information. Instead, information is fed to them. And yes, we engaged local talent to build the solution," Dikmen says proudly. "As a matter of fact, all of our programmers sit in our corporate headquarters in the Houston office." "The first unique element of CESConnect is the ability to extract an invoice from the energy vendor on the day it is issued," Dikmen adds. "This means we provide our customers with immediate access to bills. No more waiting on post mail or sorting through hundreds of e-mails in hopes to pay your bills on time." This addresses a key issue that companies have, especially when they have multiple locations scattered across the US. Companies with single locations can easily log into online portals provided by their respective energy company , however, for businesses with multiple geographically dispersed locations, accessing many different portals from many different suppliers becomes an unmanageable task. "Because it is time consuming and confusing, companies don't closely review and track their utility bills, nor have the resources to audit them and not paying attention has often proven to be quite costly when expensive errors go unnoticed," states Dikmen.CESConnect offers lots of customizations including allowing companies to assign different levels of access to protect information, run customizable budget reports and deliver them in the specified inbox on the pre-requested date. Clever alerts are set up to track usage and spend abnormalities, and relevant performance benchmarks as well as peer performance benchmarks can be set.So what is the real impact to Choice Energy Services clients? The company already brings about unprecedented wholesale data and knowledge to make smart hedging decisions for its clients regardless of their geographical locations (deregulated or not), with its in house legal and tax staff advising clients beyond the normal scope and in addition, the company leverages the information CESConnect collects and tracks to put up a fight on behalf of its customers. "Sometimes a simple mistake from the supplier can cause a big mistake in a financial report. From the moment customers engage with us, they have the peace of mind that utility expenses are watched and measured. If our clients are audited, all of the current and historical information is available," Dikmen explains.Sustainability-minded Choice Energy Services also helps companies obtain or hang on to their Energy Star Ratings via a 100 percent hands-off process, including readily vailable carbon footprint reports CESConnect platform takes away the tedious work of monthly manual data submission for each location. "Once a company becomes a Choice client, there is no longer a need to do much. Everything needed for either mandatory or voluntary sustainability reporting is at their fingertips," remarks Dikmen. Overall, the goal of Choice Energy Services is to bring financial efficiency to energy management and change the way businesses navigate the energy landscape. Using a managed process built on market-driven information and enabled by innovative technology, Choice Energy Services' customers have realized savings as simple as the air conditioning settings being wrong or as transformational as creating a centralized energy action plan. Kiki DikmenWe enable our clients' to focus on their core business while they have the peace of mind around their utility spend and reporting20 MOST PROMISINGSOLUTION PROVIDERS - 2016
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