New Marketer Goes Live with nGenue
Our latest Go Live is for an established Marketer in the Northeast who, like many, built its business on the back of a spreadsheet; a spreadsheet that spawned another spreadsheet and yet another spreadsheet, so on and so on, requiring excessive data entry for each and every new customer. Managing the business became increasingly laborious – everything was manual and detached. Each area of the business was managed by its own spreadsheet and none of the data tied together. It was difficult to audit, required too much time to reconcile, and growing the business without significantly greater headcount expense was impossible.
It was earlier this year when the operations director was juggling day-to-day business and grappling with manually intensive activities that had made workload unmanageable. The self-described business process required “excessively manual management of an insane amount of data, requiring increased headcount investment to meet business objectives.” With objectives of growing its C&I book across existing LDCs and expansion into new markets, the business was at the breaking point, where 2-3 additional headcount were necessary to sustain existing operations, let alone grow. Such headcount investment was not feasible, either operationally or financially, so a cost-effective alternative had to be found.
Near the peak of exasperation, the operations director recalled a conversation from many months earlier that had introduced the nGenue solution for natural gas operations. A call was made and nGenue Customer Success resources engaged, following a course of needs assessment, fit analysis, capabilities demonstration, and solution proposal. This supplied the leadership team with the required information and confidence to proceed with an nGenue implementation for retail natural gas operations functionality spanning pricing, CIS, forecasting and LDC EDI automation.
Like most nGenue implementations, data conversion and implementation were straightforward – start to finish, the implementation required 6 weeks’ effort. Data from existing operations was consolidated into the nGenue repository and a raft of spreadsheets were retired. This marketer now has a solution that handles every aspect of its business, from new customer identification through gas supply forecasting, LDC connectivity and reporting, with all data smartly housed in a central repository, simultaneously accessible by all staff members. The marketer pointed out, “considerably more data is accessible than before”, including a view of accurate load and pricing data and more sophisticated business KPIs. Lastly, replacing the former EDI provider with nGenue EDI automation enabled back office headcount to be redirected towards growing sales, while at the same time eliminating the previous EDI provider’s “annoying charges for every transaction, meter, market, and trading partner”.
Many we speak with believe an end-to-end operational solution to service a natural gas book either does not exist or, if it does, it will be cost prohibitive, but this marketer will attest that neither of these opinions are true. As this new nGenue user stated, “We really like having all our data in one place, how everything ties together within the system and we are really excited about all the things being automated. With nGenue, we have freed up a ton of time that is now being spent on entering other markets and better penetrating our existing markets.”
– Ken
