UAE district cooling company puts customers first with advanced cloud services

Emirates District Cooling Company (Emicool), a leading provider of district cooling services in the UAE, has enhanced front and back-office operations with Oracle Fusion and Customer Cloud Service. 

In the United Arab Emirates’ hot climate, keeping homes and properties cool is a priority, especially as urban development continues to grow rapidly. 

Emicool’s mission, alongside the reliable supply of cool water, has been to exceed customer expectations, with features including transparent bills and on-demand account controls. 

The challenge

With the aim to advance its digitalisation journey to automate previously manual processes and consolidate its data management, Emicool’s top priority was to upgrade its key customer interactions, such as metering, billing, and payments, while streamlining the back-office processes that support these crucial touchpoints. 

To achieve this, it sought digital solutions to modernise its most important customer journeys and enhance satisfaction. 

Mohamed Al Jahazi, Chief Services Officer at Emicool, explains: “In line with the UAE’s vision for a smart, data-driven city and the growing need for an integrated system that encompasses all aspects of billing and service management, Emicool initiated the search for a new solution capable to deliver the greater efficiency, enhanced accuracy and improved productivity for better customer satisfaction.” 

This resulted in the company selecting Oracle Fusion and Oracle Utilities Customer Cloud Service (OUCCS) to link its front and back-office processes in one records system, enabling digitalisation of the key customer journeys through a single meter-to-cash solution. 

For example, the platform would give customers on-demand access to everyday account activities and simple self-service payment channels.  

Easy-to-use reporting tools would put real-time account data at customers and agents’ fingertips, including consumption insights that promote energy efficiency.  

This would give Emicool’s agents a 360-degree view of customer data, equipping them to resolve queries and issues faster, while enabling IT staff to focus on its wider digital transformation. 

Behind Emicool’s solution

Mounier Boukadidi, Oracle’s Middle East Account Director, explains that several considerations go into the design of a solution to meet demands such as those of Emicool. 

These include the billing and invoicing requirements of the customer and region, security and compliance with local regulations, scalability and performance, and future readiness – for example, for integration with a smart city platform or energy resource diversification. 

There also may be a need for some customisation, depending on the business model, regulatory environment and customer base. 

Other considerations are automated meter reading versus manual data uploads, the data validation rules to detect anomalies, leaks or tampering, plus integration with meters or building management systems.

Implementing the solution

Boukadidi describes the implementation of a billing platform for district cooling as a structured, multi-phase process that requires careful alignment of business, technical and regulatory requirements. 

The starting point is the strategy and requirement gathering to define the high-level project scope. 

From this, the solution can be designed, then configured and customised, before the data is migrated for testing. An important step at this stage is training staff in the new procedures ahead of go live. 

Once the system has moved to a steady state after running alongside the legacy environment for one or two billing cycles, further optimisation and enhancements can be introduced, such as AI or analytics and tariff updates, alongside KPI monitoring of performance. 

In addition, for Emicool, SaaS-specific security capabilities were provided, including secure data isolation and centralised access controls. 

Outcomes for Emicool 

Since implementing Oracle Fusion and OUCCS, Emicool has successfully automated most of its manual processes. This has significantly enhanced operational efficiency, boosting staff productivity by 50%. 

By automating manual processes, the company has streamlined daily operations, cutting billing time from up to 13 days to just one, optimising payments and collections and ensuring seamless financial management. 

With these advancements, Emicool can operate smarter, improve internal workflows and deliver a more efficient service experience – as demonstrated by its improved customer satisfaction results. 

"The integration of Oracle Fusion and OUCCS has transformed the way we work, automating critical processes and driving operational excellence,” comments Mohamed Al Jahazi. 

“The impact is tangible – not just in efficiency gains, but in how we empower our teams to work smarter and focus on what truly matters."

Next steps for Emicool

The next steps in Emicool’s digitalisation journey are focussed on the implementation of advanced AI, with its potential to automate repetitive tasks and give conversational access to data and workflows.  

“We think AI and especially agentic AI can add huge value in district cooling. with its combination of infrastructure operations, customer management and financial processes,” says Mohamed Al Jahazi. 

In conclusion, Mohamed Al Jahazi highlights the need in a project of this type, alongside the business, data process and staff requirements, to do due diligence on the implementation partner. 

“Verify the partner’s experience and conduct resource interviews across the organisation to ensure the right expertise is onboarded and that there is active involvement throughout the project and beyond.” 

Boukadidi stresses the alignment of solutions and upgrades to utilities’ strategic objectives. 

“Ultimately it’s about reimagining the utility business and the customer experience through the adoption of digitalisation.”