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Become a Utility of the future with a modular architecture
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@CloudSense www.cloudsense.com [email protected]
How to unlock the potential of your ERP & critical energy systems.
Become a Utility of the future with a modular architecture
Become a Utility of the future with a modular architecture
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@CloudSense www.cloudsense.com [email protected]
Introduction The effortless customer experience delivered by digital-native companies is now the holy grail in every industry. We’ve all grown accustomed to personalized experiences. Whether we’re shopping online or streaming content. Even in more traditional industries, like banking and insurance, tailored experiences have become expected. In fact, nearly 80% of millennials would consider switching Energy providers if they don’t get a seamless customer experience. But, for established Utilities and Energy providers, measuring up to the benchmark set by digital disruptors is more difficult. Why? Put simply, your business wasn’t designed for it. Utilities were built from the ground up to supply energy reliably and securely – not to offer customers a seamless experience. And your IT architecture mirrors this safety-first approach. Stability was prioritized over speed and innovation. The monolithic, all-in-one systems favored by Utilities have always been inflexible and slow – or, as a seasoned CIO put it, equal to pouring cement into your business. Today, for many Utilities providers, years of mergers and acquisitions, functionality add-ons and customization have made these already cumbersome systems more convoluted still. The layering of
complexity on complexity means that lumbering IT stacks are now the biggest barriers to innovation for Energy businesses.
But, without ripping out all your systems and starting again – at immense time and cost to your business – how can you embrace digital transformation and give your customers what they want? And, more difficult still, how can you make these changes without pressing pause on your business?
Become a Utility of the future with a modular architecture
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@CloudSense www.cloudsense.com [email protected]
Moving away from an all-in-one architecture
There’s no two ways about it, if you want to thrive you need to embrace digital. Without it, you’ll stagnate or be left behind by rivals, regulations and disruptors. In Deloitte’s survey, 95% of power sector respondents agreed with the statement “Digital transformation is a top strategic priority at my organization”.
Sadly, you can’t stop the clock while you digitize your company and customer experience. But there is a way to digitize your business while you continue to meet customer needs. Or to ‘change the wheels while driving’. A modular architecture maintains the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and transactional systems you need to keep your business running. It doesn’t interrupt your pricing and forecasting, your ETRM, your Meter Data Management or your billing. At the same time, on top of your critical Energy systems, a modular architecture gives you a flexible, cloud-based and customer-centric front end. A front end that delivers the speed, digital agility and commercial innovation you need to transform your customer experience. So a modular architecture can offer you the benefits synonymous with digital leaders. What’s more, with the right technology, it can be integrated rapidly and provide rapid time to value.
Become a Utility of the future with a modular architecture
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@CloudSense www.cloudsense.com [email protected]
A modular architecture for utilities
What’s in place today?
Before we dive into the modular architecture, it’s worth looking at the systems regularly used by Utilities like yours today. Traditional architectures are often split, somewhat crudely, into two layers: the front and back office. The front office layer is designed for engagement. It defines how your end users interact with your systems. In the past, this would have been a CRM of sorts, designed to manage incoming customer calls or mail. The back office has traditionally done the heavy lifting in your business. It takes care of the operational tasks and processes that ensure you can provision and bill your services. This is usually fulfilled by an ERP system, most commonly a SAP IS-U, to take care of the specific metering and billing requirements.
Why is a traditional architecture no longer fit for purpose? The front office As technology has leapt forward, the front office has had to evolve to handle an infinitely more complex level of customer interaction, with new layers like websites accessed through Content Management Systems (CMS) and Mobile Apps. To make it trickier still, the end-users of these systems have changed. Where it used to be your employees, it’s now your customers visiting directly – and they expect a smooth joined-up experience across every channel. On top of this, your partner numbers are growing as you form new commercial relationships to close revenue gaps. Traditional customer engagement systems lack the flexibility to handle these complex and constantly changing customer interactions. As a result, new front office systems tend to be built on Cloud technology, enabling a smooth adaptation to the rapid pace of change.
Become a Utility of the future with a modular architecture
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@CloudSense www.cloudsense.com [email protected]
The back office The back office, although critical to your business operations, has become an unscalable barrier to innovation and commercial agility. In a simpler (but less exciting) time, customer buying habits were predictable, personalization was an afterthought and the need to close the revenue gap didn’t exist. At the time, adding bespoke and ad-hoc functionality whenever you needed new capabilities made sense. It got the job done. Gradually the swell of complexity has made it impossible to continually add new capabilities. To bridge the growing gap between engagement and operations layers, many Utilities built bespoke middle office applications. But we’ve seen these applications leaving end-users operating up to 50 separate screens, alongside manual systems, to process a single order. This slow and unsustainable way of working isn’t viable as you look to move faster, innovate quicker and cut costs from your business. The best way to achieve these goals? Adopt a new architecture fit for the evolving marketplace.
How can you change? We are not suggesting you throw out your ERP. As we’ve said, it’s a critical part of your business operations.
Instead, we are championing using it in a different way – by moving your key commercial functionality from the back office to the front office. Doing this lets you remove any bespoke middleware, manual processes and non-standard code in your ERP. It empowers your commercial teams, like Product, Marketing and Sales, to offer truly personalized, friction-free experiences – without impacting IT resources in the long run.
Your engagement layer becomes seamlessly connected with your back office, without the need to create customized or siloed manual processes to get data from one place to another. This streamlines and optimizes your entire sales, order, provisioning and ongoing customer management process. In the end, you get better user experiences and lower costs.
Become a Utility of the future with a modular architecture
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@CloudSense www.cloudsense.com [email protected]
How do you get started? First, you need to identify the functionality and capabilities that would work better in your front office, over your back office or distorted middle office. To work this out, you need to ask yourself a simple question – what’s causing you the most pain? Here are some common issues to get you started: · Launching new product offerings · Order processing time · Order processing accuracy · Data coherence between your CRM and your ERP system · An inability to upsell or cross-sell to customers · Inefficiency in managing changes of address to existing ongoing services. These problems are commonly addressed by adding functional capability such as Configure Price Quote, a single Product Catalog and Order Management to your front-end system – i.e. your CRM.
Things to consider when assessing a solution
Keep your specific use cases front of mind when you assess any new systems. The likes of changing pricing tariffs, business provisioning processes and regulation compliance are integral to your business. If a solution can’t demonstrate the functionality to fulfill these processes don’t let the provider gloss over it. Integration capabilities are also vital. Guaranteeing any solution works seamlessly with all your engagement layers, as well as ensuring relevant data is passed through automatically and error-free to your ERP systems, is crucial to building a successful modular architecture.
Become a Utility of the future with a modular architecture
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@CloudSense www.cloudsense.com [email protected]
Monolithic all-in-one architecture
Modular cloud architecture
Become a Utility of the future with a modular architecture
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@CloudSense www.cloudsense.com [email protected]
Unlock the potential of your ERP With the right functionality, you can unlock the potential in your ERP by transferring key customer and commercial data to a CRM like Salesforce. Your ERP and critical Energy systems remain stable, guaranteeing reliability, accuracy and a readiness to meet regulations. Meanwhile, something magical happens in your customer engagement layer. Access to previously shackled customer data means you can offer joined-up, personalized omnichannel customer experiences. And new found commercial agility empowers you to launch profitable value-added products rapidly. Today, a modular architecture is the fastest route to becoming a modern, nimble and innovative Utility provider. Want to see how you can power profitable customer-centric experiences with CloudSense? Download your solution overview here to find out more about our Utilities sales and customer engagement platform:
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