MDMAs And Service Cycles

A Meter Data Management Agency (MDMA) is a service provider who reads meters. In some locales, a meter can be read by a variety of MDMAs, in other locales there is no MDMA as the meter is read by the distribution company. If your organization has MDMAs, then you need to be aware of the following:

• MDMAs must be linked to service agreements as a service provider. Like all service providers, they can change over time.
• When an MDMA is reading a service agreement's meters, the MDMA may override the customer's service cycle (and schedule) with their own cycle. If they do this, the customer's service cycle in the MDMA's system is defined on the service agreement's SA relationship information for the MDMA. Note: whether or not a service provider can override a service cycle is controlled by a switch on the service provider's record. Refer to Setting Up Service Providers for more details.
• A service provider's service cycle schedules are maintained using the system's normal service cycle schedule. The ID of the service provider associated with each schedule is defined on the service cycle; in other words, if a service provider reads meters and they can override the customer's service cycle, the service provider's service cycles must be defined in the system. Refer to Designing Service Cycles, Routes, And Schedules for more information.
• At billing time, the system determines if a service agreement is covered by an MDMA. If so, it uses the service cycle defined on the service agreement's MDMA SA relationship record.
• If your organization ever reads the customers' meters, your regular read cycle should be maintained on your service points. You can think of the service cycle that is defined on a service agreement's MDMA SA relationship record as an override of your service points normal service cycle.
• If the meter read download process detects that a service point is linked to a service agreement with an active MDMA, it still creates a meter read download staging record; however, it marks it as Do Not Need To Read. This means that when a service point is no longer read by an MDMA, the meter read will be downloaded normally.
• Refer to We Can Receive Consumption From Service Providers for a description of how a service provider interfaces consumption into the system.