Pinergy Case Study
Pinergy wanted to provide customers greater visibility of their energy consumption and greater control of their meters. To replace an expensive in-home display, they needed mobile App software that would communicate seamlessly between customers, banks, smart meters and Pinergy software. Several companies were involved in the development process. It was a major challenge to manage and coordinate all the contributions.
Ultan Technologies, the main software development supplier for Pinergy, needed to develop a centralised sales system and process for field workers and complete a custom developed payment system for Pinergy. This included working with MasterCard’s Simplify Commerce payment integration facility to enhance the overall functionality of the energy supplier’s customer management system. Custom Developed Payment System for Pinergy.
Opportunity
It has a huge amount of experience in creating efficient and cost-effective business solutions that work, including Pinergy’s complex payment and smart meter systems where security and control play a vital role. This is an integrated custom developed payment system that provides functionality allowing consumers to pay for their electricity in advance and increases the control consumers have over their energy usage.
Pinergy needed a comprehensive system in order to ensure that their operations worked smoothly, their sales process was tight and they met all of their regulatory duties.
They were faced with these challenges:
- Disorganised Sales Procedures: Pinergy used an inefficient system for tracking all customer acquisitions, taking in sales from their website, field agents, partners and their support team. It was pertinent to furnish detailed progress reports on their sales.
- Decentralised Customer Database: Their customer support team did not have a tool that that would give them all the information required to answer customer queries or track customer issues as they arose.
- Incomplete Reporting: They needed a software solution to help manage and connect all the processes and create reports on marketing strategies and other reports for the management team, sales teams and the regulator.
- Slow Communication with Regulator: It was necessary to send and receive messages to and from the regulator in real time for quick and responsive action.
- Inefficient Metering System: A mechanism that can manage all meter installations, track all meter readings, and create statements for the customers on a regular basis was required.
- Paper-Format Forms: Filling in very long forms in writing was tedious and very inconvenient.
- Overload of Requirements: There were too many mandatory items to deal with such as document scans and signatures.
- Inaccurate Data: Unnecessary errors, duplications, and oversights were inevitable.
- Lost Sales: The time-consuming process resulted to incomplete requirements and lost customers.
How We Helped
Ultan Technologies’ expertise in Payment Software enabled them to quickly understand the MasterCard APIs and allowed them to architect, design, develop and test a solution that works remarkably well with these APIs as well as with Pinergy’s Smart Electricity Meters.
Success Dynamics of CRM
Functions that are provided by the system using extensive customisation within Dynamics CRM:
- Manage the sales process so they can report confidently on progress through their various sales stages
- Automatically take in sales from their web site, field agents using hand held devices, 3rd party partners selling the product in retail shops and from their outsourced support team
- Report on their various marketing strategies
- Send and receive messages to and from the regulator in real time
- Provide their support team with a tool that would give them all the information required to answer customer queries; allow this support team track customer issues as they arose
- Manage all meter installations
- Track all payments coming from customers
- Track all meter readings
- Create statements for the customers on a regular basis
- Create reports as required for the management team, sales teams and the regulator
Ultan Technologies developed functionality to allow payments to be accepted on Pinergy’s website, their mobile Apps, through “payment by text” and through automatic payments when a meter’s balance is low or on dates specified by Pinergy’s customers.
The team added several new entity types to handle meters, meter readings, payments, statements, messaging to and from the regulator, etc. We customised existing entities such as Accounts, Contacts, Cases, and Opportunities. We have developed several processes that regularly query the CRM identifying changes to the data that requires messages to be automatically sent to the regulator, Pinergy’s sales people and other third party software products. We have developed several processes that react to messages from websites, the regulator and other software and automatically update or create entity instances in the CRM based on the content of these messages.
Pinergy knew Ultan Technologies was a trusted lead supplier of large, complex, secure and business-critical software systems across a number of different sectors and for a wide range of organisations and the collaborative project began.
The Dublin software development company continues to create customised software solutions for Pinergy that will further improve its operations and enhance the total customer experience.
