Electricity and gas traders is migrating from the On-Premises solution ENER-GX Sales to the cloud platform cpX.Energy
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On-Premises becomes cloud computing
E.ON Portfolio Solutions has been managing gas and electricity trading activities for large and industrial customers in the E.ON Group. The business was acquired by innogy and, until then, the company had been using the ENER-GX Sales solution
for billing its gas and electricity supply contracts. To optimise processes and save costs, the management decided to migrate from the On-Premises solution hosted by their own IT to the cpX.Energy cloud solution from Sopra Steria. In parallel to this,
E.ON Portfolio Solutions took over the process for processing electronic invoices for grid use (INVOIC) from the SAP IT solution, IS-U. This includes posting in the general ledger via service integration and responding to the grid operators via REMADV
messages. The aim of the migration was to automate billing.
The facts
- Setting up a cpX.Energy client: User authentication via OpenID Connect, establishing the technical communication connections, checking and adapting interfaces, reporting, etc.
- Migration with max. 2 days downtime: Data from an Oracle database was transferred to the MariaDB database instance cpX.Energy.
- Many new interfaces: Transfer to the new environment as workflows in the BPM solution cpX.Energy APM. Implementation of new security protocols, such as OAuth2.
- Automated processing of INVOIC invoices: Externally supplied electronic invoices pass to financial accounting in order to be forwarded for payment. Unclear cases are processed manually and all other INVOIC invoices are automated and answered in REMADV message format.
The challenge
E.ON Portfolio Solutions was spun off on a fixed date. By this time, the newly founded company had to process billing in its own systems as previous IT resources were no longer available. This increased the requirements for the transition project.
Application downtime as part of the technical migration could last no longer than two days at most.
An additional complication was that the process for processing electronic invoices had to be taken over from another system (SAP IS-U) and another department. The previous billing team were to remain in place. The best and only solution option was
to ensure the highest possible degree of automation.
The solution
cpX.Energy is very well suited for such transition projects. The platform-based solution is developed and hosted by Sopra Steria. Customers do not need to build an IT infrastructure so a project can start immediately. The project therefore requires
little time and budget and can be planned with precision. In addition, a scaling model for the software-as-a-service fee ensures genuine pay-per-use.
Therefore, the cpX.Energy platform for energy traders from E.ON Portfolio Solutions offers a high-performance solution
for billing electricity and gas supply contracts for large and industrial customers. The solution supports all relevant processes, namely contract billing, quotation calculations, market communication and planning. A subledger is also available
to users.
Automated processing of electronic invoices (INVOIC) has been added to contract billing specifically for E.ON Portfolio Solutions.
Cooperation
The project was completed in less than five months. It followed a standard procedure combined with agile components. The concept was developed in workshops - 100 percent remotely. The project team coordinated closely with upstream and downstream communication service providers. All questions, tasks and problems to be clarified were quickly resolved by the project participants. This solution orientation with everyone pulling together contributed greatly to the success of the project.
The result
After the short project in terms of time and budget the billing system was available. This meant that E.ON Portfolio Solutions was able to continue working with cpX.Energy from one day to the next without any lengthy interruptions. All interfaces
worked smoothly.
The new process for processing electronic invoices (INVOIC) was then put into operation. Initial experiences: Cooperation in the pretesting by a service provider and the automated further processing in cpX. Energy is working very well.
INVOIC invoices are imported into the cpX.Energy billing solution via web service calls by cpX.APM (Advanced Process Management as an integration add-on). Tests run automatically. Cases requiring clarification are displayed concisely on a monitor, pre-sorted by the upstream service provider. Responses to all other invoice transactions are automated.
When INVOIC invoices are to be rejected, a negative REMADV message is sent, stating the grounds for the rejection. For remaining invoices, a positive REMADV message is sent out and the electronic invoices are transferred to financial accounting for
payment.
Many thanks to everyone at Sopra for the excellent support and cooperation throughout the project period. For us, cpx. Energy has become an indispensable system that has solved many problems and created new opportunities in our company.
Wolfgang Stroh, Leiter E2E Operations, E.ON Portfolio Solutions
About the customer
E.ON Portfolio Solutions GmbH (EPS) is one of the leading German providers of electricity and gas commodity solutions, employing around 100 people. EPS customers include several hundred public utilities and regional suppliers as well as large industrial
customers. The range of products and services offered covers standard products, such as scheduled deliveries and residual load coverage contracts through to portfolio manage-ment services and individual supply plans. EPS has around 10 locations
in Germany. Its main locations are in Dortmund and Essen.
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