Quadrus was able to provide high-quality, client-focused solutions both on time and on budget while Direct Energy received the software solutions necessary to make its business increasingly efficient and effective.
HOW WE DO IT - Case Studies
Direct Energy
Objective:
To enhance the organization's internal processes via the development of software and database solutions to meet their business needs.
Solution:
Quadrus and Direct Energy personnel worked collaboratively to plan, build, manage and implement complete and effective software and data solutions.
As Alberta's newest energy retailer, Direct Energy is a wholly owned subsidiary of Centrica plc, a leading U.K.-based supplier of energy and home services with more than 45 million customer relationships worldwide. In 2000, Centrica entered the North American market by acquiring Direct Energy, which will supply energy and other related services and products to almost 4 million Canadians starting in May 2004.
Direct Energy identified a need for an enhanced and increasingly automated method of managing its customer and business services contracts. Quadrus was engaged to develop a Windows .NET forms application with Direct Energy that would enable it to easily share customer information with its partners for billing purposes. Direct Energy understood that a new .NET-based application would provide the necessary fast response times as well as the capabilities for a rich, end-user interface—two requirements deemed important by the organization. Quadrus made it a priority to work closely with the application's end-users in order to effectively define, refine and fulfill all necessary requirements and features.
Direct Energy recognized the need to build an application to ease communication efforts between Direct Energy and its partners and looked to Quadrus to deliver the necessary solution. In the past, flat data files were exchanged between organizations. However, given the sheer volume of files exchanged, effective management of them was becoming more cumbersome and time consuming. Direct Energy wanted to automate this incoming data and automatically extract these files to a central database repository. Quadrus created a new system using Microsoft SQL Server and Data Transformation Services to improve this workflow and generate a central repository for this information. Advanced features were incorporated to allow the standardization of data as it arrived from various disparate partner systems. The new solution effectively detected new files as they arrived, merged them into a standard format and automatically imported them to a database for easier query, data analysis and reporting.
Direct Energy also required a compliance control system in order to adhere to new strict governmental legislation around access to regulated and deregulated customer information. Quadrus was engaged to provide an effective web-based application database to automate the approval process in a secure and straightforward manner. ASP.NET was used for easy deployment and to enable the integration of an email notification system—thus providing an efficient approval system and control of who had access to the contract database at all times.
In working collaboratively, both Quadrus and Direct Energy's needs were effectively met. Quadrus was able to provide high-quality, client-focused solutions both on time and on budget—while Direct Energy received the software solutions necessary to make its business increasingly efficient and effective. Direct Energy is pleased with the high standard and quality of service provided: the kind that Quadrus prides itself on providing with each and every project it undertakes.