The Hyderabad Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board (HMWSSB) tasked with supplying potable water to Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation and its surrounding areas, has a growing customer base of around 7 lakhs. HMWSSB has a jurisdiction measuring about 680 sq. km. divided into divisions and sections.

HMWSSB, one of the progressive and best managed water supply boards in the country, is striving to enhance service delivery, financial sustainability and customer satisfaction by undertaking a number of innovative measures. To achieve this, HMWSSB has introduced 'Online Mobile Bill Generation and Collection through Process Re-engineering' by implementing a scheme that would facilitate a fleet of meter reading staff to issue bills and collection of receipts at the customer door steps. This has spot billing and collection of user charges and on line updation of data for nearly 630 meter readers.




The billing system prior to 2000 was completely manual. Since 2000, billing and collection was computerized. It is only during March 2009 that the Board has introduced spot billing as well as collection through handheld machines which are managed online.

Prior to the system, there were 250 meter readers for issuing bills with a handheld machines. All the procedures were manual - the meter reader maintained a Meter Reading Book (MRB) which contained an individual ledger sheet for each of the customers. This was getting difficult to manage with growing customer base.

The collection was primarily through HMWSSB cash counters or e-Seva centres which involved a transaction cost of Rs. 5 per transaction. In both cases, getting the customer to the Cash Centre posed a problem. There were a number of problem areas related to collection related reading water meter, generating the bill, issuing and collection. There was no proper updation and reconciliation of records to manual process.
The overall objective of the initiative was to provide on line billing and collection through a fleet of meter readers with the help of a hand held machine. There was also a need for quantifying the performance indicators of billing agents, scalability, seamless data integration into the revenue application. The specific objectives of the initiative are:

• Develop a system that provides an integration interface to the revenue billing application to update decision support system and ledger updating.
• Develop a system to readily support in reconciliation and auditing
• To have optimal utilization of machines and personnel

The system was introduced in an incremental manner and expanded to all jurisdictional divisions. Each sub-process from billing, data transfer to central repository and subsequent data transfer from repository to application and the reporting modules were independently developed and tested. Integration of sub-processes was simulated on test platform by developing a separate set of hardware for database and application.

The initial handheld machines have a thermal printer. The thermal print used to fade away within a couple of months resulting in negative feedback from the customers. To overcome this problem, the supplying agency of handheld machines was requested to integrate an impact printer into the handheld machine, which gives a stable print. An online application with limited storage data in the handheld machines and instantaneous update to the database server providing transparent information to the user was implemented.
The initiative was implemented with one time cost of Rs. 5 lakhs but has resulted in savings of Rs. 15 lakh in terms of operations and manpower. In addition, the revenue collections have increased from around Rs. 24 crores to Rs. 30 crores per month. Nearly five crores per month are collected through the handheld machines by meter readers through spot billing and collection. The number of customer paying bills has significantly gone up from 24% to 46% and this can be attributed to the spot billing and collection since this mechanism is targeting those who are not coming forward to pay their bills through other channels.

Reliable and timely information window to the billing situation in the field and management.

Underutilized manpower which was idle during the later fortnight of the months, after the billing was done, was put to use in collections resulted in cost saving of around 2 lakhs per month by avoiding transaction cost of Rs. 5/- towards each transaction to third-party collection agencies like e-Seva, AP Online, etc.

The collections were accepted at the customers door step immediately after the bill is issued, prompting 20% of the customers to make immediate payments. Now, HMWSSB can generate reports showing up to date billing and collection progress on demand.
For further details, contact:

Managing Director
Hyderabad Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board (HMWSSB)
Administrative Building
Khairatabad, Hyderabad 500 004
Ph: 040 - 23442844
Fax: 040 - 23442855
Email: md@hyderabadwater.gov.in