Sycous Roadmap 2025
We have a commitment to ensuring that our software is constantly evolving to improve and address new challenges in the meter and billing industry. Our roadmap includes a mix of new features, existing feature improvements, and infrastructure and performance improvements so that you can have confidence that Mabdeck will continue to evolve in the ways that you need.
Our 2025 work focuses on PAYG improvements and our new Credit Control module. This will be complemented by projects looking to improve consumer experience, with a view to enhancing the experience and provide more functionality to residents using Mabdeck.
Check out below to see what you can expect next from Mabdeck, from imminent new releases to our core project areas. You can find our recently released features and improvements here: https://help.mabdeck.com/hc/en-gb/articles/19772877914130-Feature-Release-History
Our next release
We’re nearly ready to share some of our latest features, improvements and fixes with you. Our next release is currently in our testing environment, and will be live for you to use imminently!
1. Checkbox custom fields! Users will now have the ability to add a checkbox as a custom field, to an account, network, meter, or property. This will allow custom data to be saved in Mabdeck.
2. This release adds more support for reading files coming from an Elvaco unit, for heat & cooling meters, so that these readings can be added to Mabdeck automatically.
3. A basic Account Information API has been created, which can be used to export basic account details, such as account number, transactions, and account balance.
4. As part of this release, we are upgrading our Fetcher functionality. This is the function which transfers the many 1000s of reading and transaction files which we receive each day, to their relevant locations, to be imported automatically into Mabdeck. The new process will be much slicker, and will allow us to add new fetcher configurations in a simpler way, ensuring that your file transfers can be automated more quickly than ever.
Upcoming improvements and features
We’re working hard on a host of new features and improvements right now, that will be ready to go onto test instances in the near future.
1. A new look consumer dashboard – a new and improved consumer login, providing a new look and performance improvements over the existing consumer login experience. This project is the first step in a wider consumer experience
project and enables some of the later work we will release. Have a look below to see what that involves.
2. Integration with 1NCE Sim cards to communicate with Orbit devices.
3. Ability to add an Orbit “solution” to use in Mabdeck, which will ensure adding hardware to Mabdeck to be able to operate Orbit hubs is a smooth and clear process.
4. Reading Robots – Over the next few weeks, we will focus on implementing reading robots where we do not currently have them in place. This includes changes to the existing Elvaco robot, to be able to take in more file types, as well as a robot for Meterpoint files.
5. Credit Control – back-end changes required to facilitate the implementation of the new credit control features. Includes updates to transaction adding and storage, debt creation and balance handling etc.
6. Billing Runs performance improvements – UI updates to the billing runs page in Mabdeck, to speed up page loading speeds.
7. New reading robots to process files for dual-register electricity devices, sent from an Elvaco, and to process standard Meterpoint files.
8. New invoice documentation for sales transactions – new invoice documentation for sales transactions, to provide more flexibility for providing charges to residents.
9. MFA – multi factor authentication for admin portal users in Mabdeck.
10. Back-end performance updates and upgrades – further updates to Mabdeck infrastructure and component versions to keep the Mabdeck technology stack up to date and secure.
Projects
These are our current active projects to give you an idea of the improvements and new features you can expect in Mabdeck in the coming year. As we work on specific pieces of these projects, you can find more detail above in the Upcoming Improvements and Features section.
Credit Control
Early in 2025, we will begin Stage 1 of our overhaul of Credit Control functionality in Mabdeck. Initially, this will include rebuilding the background Credit Control infrastructure, to help maintain the scalability and efficiency of the functionality when we start to add more features. We’ll also include some small, additional, quality of life features as part of Stage 1, including the ability to set up customised Credit Control paths for initial, ongoing and final statements. We’ll also introduce user-set minimum debt levels from which to start tracking debt on an account, giving the user more control over when residents will be contacted and allowing the user to focus on the debt amounts which are important to them.
Stage 2 of the Credit Control overhaul will introduce payment plan functionality into Mabdeck, so that outstanding debts can be paid back regularly, and monitored for adherence. We will also implement a payment plan calculator for administrators to use,
which will recommend a suggested monthly payment value based on outstanding debt and historic statement values.
Stage 3 of the Credit Control overhaul will introduce SMS as a possible Credit Control action, with the aim of improving the Credit Control experience for the resident too.
Finally, in Stage 4 we intend to make the Credit Control engine smarter generally, with the addition of further Credit Control actions, including automated MBUS disconnect.
As always, if you have any suggestions for our Credit Control overhaul please do get in touch!
Multi-factor authentication and social media login
We will implement multi-factor authentication in Mabdeck for administrators, as an extra security measure upon login.
We will expand login methods for consumers, with the ability to sign on using a social media login, including Facebook, Apple and Google sign on, making their online account even easier to set up and access.
PAYG Device Integration
We'll be implementing deeper integration with the PAYG hubs we work with and increased consumer flexibility and experience around PAYG use. This will include easier payments, tariff integrations and much more!
We will continue to expand our Orbit offering, adding the ability to set up flexible friendly disconnect periods, or custom emergency credit limits. This will provide administrators with a flexible and efficient way of billing PAYG customers, along with the ability to use Orbit in such a way that it protects our most vulnerable residents.
We also intend to expand our integration with existing payment methods, by adding the ability to set up a recurring Stripe payment for Credit and PAYG users, as well as further integration with PayPoint cash payments, to receive these in real time.
Consumer Improvements
A large proportion of our time will be spent on elevating the consumer experience. This will include an overhaul of the consumer dashboard and new features specific to consumers, including ability to set budgets, remote supply control and an Alexa app.
We want to ensure that the process for contacting your own customers is straightforward too, by introducing consumer campaign management in Mabdeck. Informing customers of network or client wide information, such as network maintenance, resident engagement or surveys or tariff changes will become quick and
painless. Configurable for all communication methods available, from notes on statements and custom generated letters, to banners on the consumer dashboard and email or text notifications.
We also want to expand the Mabdeck offering, so that customer complaints can be tracked within the Mabdeck portal, rather than outside of it in a separate external system. To achieve this, we will add complaint functionality into Mabdeck, so that you can set up a custom complaint process for your residents. We will provide full visibility of complaints which have been set up on accounts, so that you can monitor and reassign outstanding complaints if required, to ensure your customer is being taken care of. Automated actions can be set up as part of the complaint process, so your customers will remain updated each step of the way, as well as notifications to Mabdeck administrators prompting complaints to be consistently updated.
Future Considerations –
· Future consumption prediction based on historic readings and site averages, with the ability to use this for fixed Direct Debit/Payment Plan calculation
· Implementation of Complaint tracking functionality
· Stripe auto-topup integration based on a PAYG unit reaching a specific balance.
· Overhaul of Mabdeck permissions
· Post fulfilment integration with Docmail