In January 2020, AES decided to start using Sparkplug as their core software to implement their digital transformation strategy. Their goal was to have one solution for all key business processes. Why was this so important to AES? They wanted to focus on improving the customer sales journey and getting the right client information to energy advisors – at the right time – to increase sales.

Challenges

AES deals with everything from residential to mass markets to large C&I. Their network of over 200 energy advisors, outside consultants, and brokers need to be able to access relevant sales, pricing, and operational information quickly on a single screen. In addition, they needed a system that could efficiently process over 20,000 electric and natural gas customer meters that at the time was completely overwhelming their Salesforce CRM and Microsoft Access database systems. In 2019 the founders of the company made the decision to focus on their core competencies of selling energy and search for a strategic partner that can support their technological needs.

This quest started in July 2019 when the AES team attempted to automate their business processes by partnering with Edge on Demand (another retail industry software). At the time that was a slightly less expensive option than purchasing Sparkplug. Unfortunately, this did not work out as planned. Director of Sales and Operations, Paul Rhoads, said “Edge on Demand took more than 6 months to attempt to migrate our data and they struggled to understand the key details and challenges our particular business faced. There was several key deadlines that were missed and it was hampering our business growth.”

Being completely frustrated with lack of progress from the Edge on Demand team, Paul Rhoads decided to look into the slightly more expensive option in December 2019 and decided to call Enerex. Paul explained all his problems with their current service provider and the challenges they were facing between so many standalone systems. Over a couple conversations, the Enerex team and AES wrote out a migration and custom development plan that included key milestone dates.

In January 2020, Paul decided to make the “leap of faith” and partner with Enerex as their strategic software developer. The goal was to switch from their legacy systems to the spark plug system during the first weekend of April 2020. Due the complexities of AES having over 1,000,000 records in their CRM system, and having over 75,000 deal account history, it would take a couple months of the AES and the Enerex team working on the migration data templates together.

Solution

Fast forward to July 2020 and AES is now fully integrated on the Sparkplug platform. One of the biggest advantages of having a platform like Sparkplug is to eliminate the need to manage data in silos improving overall efficiency with better team collaboration. Our team at PM took this project as a challenge and successfully completed it. According to Paul Rhoads, “Edge on Demand attempted to migrate our data over 6 months and the Enerex Team accomplished it over one weekend!”.
The AES team has enjoyed working with the team at Enerex so much so that they have decided to sign up for two of their other additional services as well as implement some custom development projects.

1. Exchange LIVE – Bring your customers and suppliers into the bidding process! With both reverse auction and discrete bid capabilities .
2. Power Portal – White-labeled integrated shopping platform to extend your pricing matrices on your company website

“Enerex has been extremely helpful and professional throughout the whole process. We have requested several customizations to fit our business model and their team took a great deal of pride in their work, delivered solutions that exceeded our needs and gave us exactly what we were looking for in a broker system and technology partner. Their team put in long hours and even worked over several weekends for me. I truly consider them not just as a vendor for us, but a strategic partner that can help our business reach the technological capabilities that I only dreamed about before.” Paul Rhoads, Director of Sales & Operations, Achieve Energy Solutions

Some additional benefits AES is utilizing within Sparkplug:

1. Automatic commission reconciliation
2. Structure commission payment calculation for sales & agents – with draw and earned capability
3. Eligible customer list integration
4. Sales CRM for leads, opportunities, pipeline and pricing automation
5. Automated LOA & proposal generation
6. Customized automated email template capability to communicate with prospects and customers
7. EDI/HU direct into sparkplug from 25 different utilities and counting
8. 360-degree view of customer interactions

“Enerex has been a lifesaver for our business’s digital transformation strategy. It has helped us to automate our user, partner, and end use customer interactions seamlessly on one platform. Before that we were struggling between Salesforce & our Microsoft access database system to find accurate customer information and there was lot of duplicate work because both systems were not connected. The Sparkplug system is the best product I have seen in Retail Energy and the team at Enerex is a joy to work with. They went above and beyond to work with us to ensure we have exactly what we want and need for our growing business. I highly recommend them to any brokerage firm that wants to take their business to the next level. If they can handle our company’s data size effectively, they can handle any company.”
Paul Rhoads, Director of Sales & Operations, Achieve Energy Solutions