1 / 26

Business Collaboration platform for utilities industry

Business Collaboration platform for utilities industry. Peter Van Kerkhove Managing Partner. Agenda. About Essent About Cnext Dynamo - Project Goals Business Collaboration Solution Approach Lessons Learned Questions? . About Essent. Wie is Essent?.

gavin
Download Presentation

Business Collaboration platform for utilities industry

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Business Collaboration platform for utilities industry Peter Van Kerkhove Managing Partner

  2. Agenda • About Essent • About Cnext • Dynamo - Project Goals • Business Collaboration Solution • Approach • LessonsLearned • Questions?

  3. About Essent

  4. Wie is Essent? De betrouwbaarheid, competentie en reputatie van Essent, het grootste energiebedrijf in Nederland, een grote speler in NW-Europa. • Sinds oktober 2009 onderdeel van RWE, een energiereus in de top 5 van Europa • Onder de naam Essent activiteiten in Nederland, België en Duitsland • 2,6 miljoenhuishoudelijke en zakelijkeklantenvoorgas, elektriciteit, warmte en energiediensten • Meer dan 90 jaarervaring in productie, handel, transport en levering van elektriciteit • Koploper duurzame energie in Nederland voor productie en levering: 40 % van alle duurzame productie in Nederland komt van Essent (20 % hiervan is windenergie, 80 % is biomassa) • Essent stoptmeerenergie in energie: betaalbaar, betrouwbaar en duurzaam

  5. Wie is Essent Belgium? Een sterke en vernieuwende energieleverancier in België, die investeert in duurzame energie. • Essent levert 100% groene elektriciteit • Meer dan 220.000 klanten in België • Exploitatievergunning in de 3 gewesten • Elektriciteit en gas • Alle klantensegmenten: van particulieren tot zakelijke klanten • Standaardleverancier voor Waver, Limal & Bièrges (WaLiBi) • 125 wns met hoofdzetel te Antwerpen

  6. About Cnext

  7. Helping organizations to achieve their strategic goals by aligning people and business processes with state of the art technology solutions. Collaborate Integrate Communicate Interact With

  8. - Cnext , Our Offering Services Solutions Innovations • Project management • Consulting • Outsourcing • Training • Business collaboration and integration with • Business communication and interaction • Strategy and planning • Research and development • Cloud computing “Extend beyond capabilities” “Choose to be effective” “Reach beyond tomorrow” Visit our website for more details on www.cnext.eu

  9. Dynamo Project Goals

  10. - Dynamo Project Goals • About Dynamo (kick off 2009): • “Re-Engineer ALL B2C (Business to Consumer) business processes” • Project Goals: • Reduce the risk of non compliance to new legislation in our industry(MIG4, SEPA) • Lower the maintenance cost (cost-to serve) • Improve data quality • Replace the current ERP (end of life) • Deliver transparancy on the Business Process execution, and enhance user experience Document Management - Business Critical functionality: Documents (invoices, letters, …) sent by postal services are playing a very important role in managing the relationship/communication between Essent and their customers.The document’s ‘outbound channel’ is thus regarded as a very important channel within customer care and has impact on direct costs and perceived image/ customer experience.

  11. - Document Management Project Challenges IT challenges Business challenges 1. How to extend ERP business processes beyond (enterprise) boundaries? 1. Outbound document batches to our customers need to be processed within hours.... 2. How to ‘integrate’ our existing applications into Axapta (eg customer onboarding) 2. Transparancy on execution of core business processes (amongst the billing run ( ‘One version of the truth’) 3. What’s the best solution to turn ERP data into printed documents (invoices?) 3. We need a flexible platform to setup and maintain business collaborationwith our external partners. (agility) 4. How to secure the communication with our external partners (debts collection, sales, ..) One of the key focus area's in utility sector is to find the right balance between(1)controlling costs related to service delivery (= providing energy to the customer), while (2) investing in delivering excellent customer care experience to Essent’s customers

  12. “We need a flexible, and cost efficient solution to support our E-Business strategy” “Electronic business methods enable companies to link their internal and external data processing systems more efficiently and flexibly, to work more closely with suppliers and partners, and to better satisfy the needs and expectations of their customers” Source: Wikipedia

  13. - E-Business - requirements Most important requirements for a solution supporting Essent’s E-Business Strategy • Generic (modular) platform, ‘pluggable’ into the existing infrastructure at Essent, build using .NET SOA principles. • Enterprise ready and scalable platform, should support Essent’s growth • End to End transparency on process execution (BAM – Business Activity Monitoring) • ‘Future proof’ platform: Must be easy to set-up additional e-business channels. • Cost effictive, build upon existing investments made in technology stack (like XSL-FO, MS BizTalk, ...)

  14. Essent has chosen to support their E-business strategy by implementing a Business Collaboration Platform, based on MS BizTalk Server 2009. This allows Essent to become a more agile organization, supporting their initiative to optimize Essent’s B2C (Business to Consumer) business processes, and as a result respond faster to (market) changes.

  15. Business Collaboration Solution

  16. BizTalk as orchestration engine for Document Generation Business Partners Channel(debts collection, Sales, ...) <XML/> <XSL-FO/> Printing/Mailing Contact Center ‘Secured‘ Internet (AS2, ...) Document Management Services

  17. Orchestration engine for Document Generation:

  18. BizTalk as Customer Interaction Channels connector Customer Interaction Channels (outbound) Customer Interaction Channels (inbound) Contact Center <XML/> Email Print & mail <XML/> Fax Fax Customers Letters (demat +OCR) Email Document Management Services Website

  19. - Capabilities Business Process Outsourcing (Printing and mailing // CallCenter operations): • All documents towards consumers and business partners are ‘handled’ by a specialized business partner.The automation process is implemented and governed by BizTalk server • End to End Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) – including delivery notification by ‘De Post’ • High Volume Document generation • Technologies involved • PDF generation Engine (XSL-FO and .NET based – the fastest on the market) • WCF • BizTalk Server • SQL Server • AS2 secured communication • Benefits: • Reduce cost to handle invoices • Reduce errors during billing runs • Reduce cost for postal services Enhance visibility transparency on the FULL process cycle

  20. - Capabilities • SOA platform for Business Collaboration (EAI & B2B) • Interfacing between all major internal systems are managed by BizTalk Server, • MS Dynamics ERP, Essent Public website, Partner interfaces, … • SOA interface on top of Essent’s core document management System (docbase) • Core processes are exposed/consumed by BizTalk Server • Technologies involved • WCF • SQL & ORACLE LOB adapter • BizTalk Server • SQL Server • Axapta AIF adapter for BizTalk • SFTP adapter • Benefits: • Future ready – scalable platform • Centralized and managed integration platform • Near-real time visibility/reporting towards the business users (KPI’s exposed through BAM)

  21. Approach

  22. Started with a Proof of Concept • Target: challange high volume, low latency and high performantdocument rendering solution, based on BizTalk Server(batch (asynch) and real-time (synch) processing in 1 platform • Implementation: • A lot of testing ! • Business critical • Image, quality and cost to serve are highly dependant on successof the overall solution • (manual validation of all documents generated) • Go live 29 March 2010 very succesfull

  23. LessonsLearned

  24. Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) of large BizTalk solutions is not a trivial task • large amount of ‘environments’ • huge pressure to deliver deployments on a DAILY basis • Requires: • Requires maturity of the implementation team (procedures) • Some ‘tweaking’ using additional tools and automated deployment Scripts needed • Delivered this feedback to the MS BizTalk product team, • ALM is a major topic for enhancements for the next releases of BizTalk. • 2) Performance and low latency requirements: • architecture very important • do not re-invent the wheel (look for existing patterns)

  25. Lessons Learned IT challenges Business challenges 1. How to extend ERP business processes beyond (enterprise) boundaries? 1. Outbound document batches to our custumers need to be processed within hours.... 2. Transparancy on execution of core business processes (amongst the billing run ( ‘One version of the truth’) 2. How to ‘integrate’ our existing applications into Axapta (eg customer onboarding) 3. What’s the best solution to turn ERP data into printed documents (invoices?) 3. We need a flexible platform to setup and maintain business collaboration with our external partners. (agility) 4. How to secure the communication with our external partners (debts collection, sales, ..)

  26. Questions?

More Related