How Hafslund Celsio Reduced Total Service Costs by 45% with UtilityCloud

Hafslund Celsio, Norway’s largest district heating company, transformed its customer management and billing operations with UtilityCloud. The result was a 45% reduction in total service costs, increased automation, and full control over customer data, products, and billing processes.

Background:

Hafslund Celsio is Norway’s largest district heating company. The company builds, owns, and operates district heating and district cooling networks in Oslo. In 2025, Hafslund Celsio delivered approximately 1.8 TWh of district heating to around 200,000 customers within its concession area, representing about 30 percent of Oslo’s total heating energy consumption.

Hafslund Celsio was previously part of a vertically integrated energy group alongside the regional electricity distribution system operator, now known as Elvia. With the introduction of regulatory requirements for legal, functional, and operational unbundling in Norway from 1 January 2021, the entities were required to establish full independence across governance, operations, and IT systems.

Historically, Hafslund Celsio managed its customer information and billing through a shared service provider using a single-tenant, on-premise legacy system. This setup created several challenges, including high costs, slow time-to-market (as new products had to be delivered as consulting projects), operational errors, and limited control over data, which constrained analytics capabilities and internal development.

Approach:

To meet the new regulatory requirements and modernize its technology stack, Hafslund Celsio conducted an extensive RFP process. The company selected UtilityCloud as its provider for customer information management and billing, based on its modern cloud-native technology stack, modular architecture, and lowest overall cost to serve.

As part of the transformation, Hafslund Celsio insourced its customer information management and billing operations. This included migrating its entire customer base from the legacy system to UtilityCloud and training members of the customer service team to manage products and customers, as well as overseeing the platform’s automated settlement and billing processes.

All products and contracts were configured directly within UtilityCloud. In addition, integrations were established with the CRM system, invoice distribution providers, and banking partners to maximize automation and enable seamless end-to-end processes.

UtilityCloud has given us full control of billing and settlement, while reducing cost, complexity, and time-to-market through automation

Mbark El Anbri, Manager of Product and Billing, Hafslund Celsio

Above: UtilityCloud software – invoicing is fully automated, and manual intervention is only required when pre-configured quality checks are triggered.

Results:

Hafslund Celsio successfully insourced its entire customer management and billing operation without adding additional resources and achieving a 45% reduction in service costs, including both outsourced system and personnel components.
These improvements were driven by the platform’s high level of automation and modular architecture, enabling seamless integration with CRM, invoice distribution, and banking systems.

In addition, UtilityCloud has provided Hafslund Celsio with significantly improved data ownership and data quality, including direct access to key operational data through open APIs and reporting tools. This has enabled more effective analysis and better-informed decision-making.

Product and customer management processes have also become more efficient, with fewer errors in the launch and modification of products, services, and tariffs. Hafslund Celsio can now manage changes directly without relying on third-party consultants, making it faster and easier to introduce new products, update existing offerings, and manage customer contracts.

After implementing UtilityCloud, we can manage customers, products, and changes directly without relying on 3rd party consultants, with better data and more efficient workflows.

Anna Medle, Head of Customer Experience, Hafslund Celsio