SuiteCRM - Case study on Major European Energy Group
About Client – European Energy Group
It is one of Europe’s largest energy companies. It produces, manages & services the gas and electricity needs of over 20 million customers. It has a global presence with more than 40 operating companies in 22 territories across the globe.
European Energy Group maintains a diversified IT platform for managing the complex tasks of billing and client management across its 20+ European operating companies. Also, growth is at a tremendous pace with a result of acquisition which is maintained by each operating company in the technology used, age and quality.
Problem:
• On 15th July 2015, the European commission adopted the communication on delivering a New Deal for energy consumers and it is called (‘New Deal’).
Under ‘New Deal’ it is said by 2020 the competitive landscape for existing energy suppliers in Europe will change drastically. The changes are as follows:
• Barriers to entry for new suppliers will be lowered
• Switching between suppliers will be made easier
• Transparency on tariffs will be mandated
• Profit margins are expected to come under pressure and
• Competition is expected to increase substantially
Approach to the Problem:
The new competitive landscape that will emerge in 2020 requires all the operating companies to be more agile, more innovative and to react faster to the new consumer and market demands. New products and services will need to be designed to broaden the engagement surface for consumers and increase the potential revenue streams for the group.
Strategic Options:
In order to meet the demands to increase agility, lower costs and deliver new products and services, a considerable program of investment in the IT estate was required. There were two strategic options:
• To invest in each individual operating company platform and make the necessary local changes to ensure the platform and supporting applications were sufficiently performing to embrace new market conditions.
• To develop, from scratch, a common operating platform across all European operations.
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Decision Time
In August 2015, it was decision time. A board of ten senior executives was convened to decide which option to pursue:
• Accenture and Salesforce whose teams had originally been tasked with producing the new operating platform. They had been working on a solution since 2013.
• The Open Source Operating Platform – the result of a little over sixteen weeks of work involving around six people from four open source companies.
The Decision
It wasn’t even close. The board split 8-2 to award the program of works to the Open Source Operating platform.
The board was impressed by the speed of innovation demonstrated by the open source solution providers, the interoperability between the applications and the richness of functionality of the open source applications. The project cost profile, the total cost of ownership profile and the ongoing freedom to innovate on the platform were also major considerations.
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