All is well instead of e-mail hell
The situation
E-mails may be quick and convenient for everyday office use, but they are not a good solution in the dynamic control energy market. At a minimum, this was the experience of Centralschweizerische Kraftwerke AG (CKW). It markets control energy for Swiss grid company Swissgrid – energy both from its own plants and from third-party plants of partners. The operators of these plants use an Excel template to report the energy they can supply. This spreadsheet was sent to CKW by e-mail, and further exchange of information also took place by e-mail. This was an error-prone process with a great deal of manual effort. Of key importance was that it was clearly too slow.
The challenge
Strictly speaking, we needed to tackle two tasks: Both the marketing of control energy and the communication with the partners had to be optimised. On top of that, the new solution should be able to be expanded in the future to include additional partners, products and markets.
The solution
They asked for it, we did it: We created a marketing tool with a flexible information and communication platform for their partners. They access it using a web interface and directly enter all information into the database in a standardised form. Offers are then prepared and exported to Swissgrid.
In a second step requested by CKW, we expanded the web portal into an information portal. Now partners can set up graphically formatted information on prices, revenues and called-up quantities as required. CKW can set up uniform standard views for many partners as well as custom views for individual partners.
The benefits
- Convenient for CKW and all partners to use
- Saves time through standardisation and a high degree of automation
- Maximum flexibility – with a mobile version also available for use
- Customisation of views for partners possible
Project facts
Client:
Centralschweizerische Kraftwerke AG | www.ckw.ch
Technology:
Toolbox for user-specific web interfaces
Project duration:
6 months
Industry:
The energy industry
Project results
Faster and more efficient data entry
Automated transmission of offers and availabilities to the CKW marketing tool
Clear presentation of the surcharges for the partner
Audit compliance improved