Partnership with esave consultancy to modernize and scale energy saving services
UK consultancy and energy procurement company, esave, had a vision of expanding beyond just offering energy consultancy, to providing the technological tools for their clients to control and optimize their energy consumption and costs.
Together we built a digital platform that measures, manages and improves the use of energy for esave’s clients, through data management.
ABOUT THE CLIENT
esave is a UK-based company, providing energy saving consultancy and procurement, through comprehensive management strategies. They activate in the field of energy saving for over twenty years, bringing in over forty years of experience in the field.
esave is helping businesses understand their energy usage through effective resource management, so they can increase efficiencies and reduce negative environmental impact. From providing sustainability solutions, to energy management and procurement, they manage business contracts, environmental compliance, auditor services, carbon footprinting and many more.
https://www.esaveuk.com/
Industry
Energy and Sustainability
Location
Inverness, UK
Duration
since 2016
Technologies used:
THE CHALLENGE
With the constant increase of complexity in the energy industry the need of a modern and easy-to-use web platform to complement our client’s services came naturally.
esave was looking for the right software development team to expand and modernize their custom software, which consisted of desktop applications, integrators with energy suppliers systems and a simple portal for clients to login and perform energy consumption reporting tasks.
Upon our initial encounters, we focused on understanding our partners’ long-term strategy and vision, progressively zooming in to the immediate task at hand.
They wanted to expand their online portals and incorporate more of their desktop application functionalities, which included:
client, contract and provider management
internal task management
automated internal task generation and management
energy bill checking
multiple sources data collection
automated communications
OUR SOLUTION
We developed a web application that strips back the complexity of data management and provides both simple and in-depth reports on consumption.
Client Initial Situation
Old web & desktop applications
New unified application
The client already had a web application which was helping their clients perform basic energy performance reporting. It was built in PHP, using Qlik Sense and multiple SQL databases to let users store data and perform business logic operations.
Furthermore, the client used a second desktop application to do administrative and management operations.
The new application we had to develop was meant to incorporate important functionalities from the existing apps and add new functionalities on top, while improving the existing code base and software architecture to be able to improve the performance, usability and prepare the application for scalability.
Real-time Energy Consumption Data
Our very first task was to set up an IoT device to collect data from the client sites, in real-time. We have used a Raspberry Pi linked to a dedicated server that was processing the data received from it’s sensors.
This feature enables clients to see their energy consumption in real-time and gives them a better understanding on how much energy they need and when. In addition, it makes forecasts, recommend different electricity providers, based on the energy consumption behaviour of each client.
This implementation, topped up by the integrations with energy supplier’s systems to collate the energy consumptions, was a success and highly appreciated by their clients. So we moved to the next step, which included merging and improving the existing platforms.
Merging and Improving the Existing Platforms
Upon a holistic review and consultation with esave, we decided to start the remake of the existing web application. Knowing that the company planned on expanding into new markets, we transformed it into a multilingual platform.
In order to prevent any disruptions for the clients who were using the old platform, we kept the old functionalities and gradually released the updated modules. In this way, clients barely noticed any disruptions and they were not even aware we were working on updating the platforms.
We wrote the new platform in the .NET framework, using C# for the business logic and Microsoft SQL Server for the database storage. The front-end of the app was built in Angular, keeping the previous look and feel of the first version of the platform. This ensured a smooth transition for the users from the old platform to the new, enhanced one.
This approach required considerable reorganization but gave us the opportunity to establish a robust framework for achieving the potential both we and the client were looking for.
Enhanced Features
Keeping in mind the client’s need of a simple-to-use platform which can perform multiple tasks, we modernized and implemented the following features:
Energy site management and analysis
Consumption monitoring charts and stats that could easily be viewed by day of the week, monthly, quarterly, etc.
Tendering – comparing quotes upon the expiry of a contract, relative to the client’s personalized consumption records, in order to choose the optimal provider and ensure resource efficiency.
Bill Checking – automated checks of billed amounts based on the site’s energy consumptions, taking into account the energy cost bands, which differ for different hours within the day
Emails and file management system
Jobs and tasks allocation
RESULTS
Fabrit has helped esave save time and money for their customers, by building and giving access to a platform useful for measuring, managing and improving the use of energy.
The tool serves the vision, both us and our partners share: that time should be well spent on innovation, while digital, automated tools do the rest.
Moreover, we provided the missing technical link that now allows our client to achieve their vision and scale up their business as planned.
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