We are pleased to announce the general availability of Oracle Utilities Customer Care & Billing 2.4.0 SP1. Key Features & Benefits: Oracle Utilities Customer Care & Billing 2.4.0 SP1 includes several base enhancements and a new licensable module called Customer Program Management. Key base enhancements in this release are:

• Configuration Migration Assistant (Additional Migration Plans) – Configuration Migration Assistant (CMA) was introduced in Oracle Utilities Application Framework V4.2.0 to supersede the ConfigLab facility. Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing now has a large number of migration plans to support migrating administration objects between environments.
• Encryption – Ability to configure encryption for fields that store sensitive data such as credit card numbers, bank account numbers, social security numbers, and MICR ID. Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA)
• Direct Debit – Functionality for configuring recurring direct debit payments in accordance with the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) initiative.
• Usage Enhancement for Bill Print – Allows additional information to be captured on a usage request to support billing when meter reads are not obtained from Oracle Utilities Customer Care & Billing but from a meter data management system (e.g. Oracle Utilities Meter Data Management).
• Preferences Portal – Communication preference zones allowing utilities to track customers’ preferred communication channels for various types of notifications or communications (e.g. phone, SMS, email).

More information can be found on OPN!