NextEnergy

Next Energy is a scale-up energy technology company and offers dynamic energy prices for their customers. These are prices that can vary by day or even by hour. By using energy at the right times, customers can save a lot of money. With this market model, they have grown rapidly in the short time that the organization has existed. It is a digital (cloud-based) organization for which Quatronic laid the foundation with the development of the complete customer registration portal, back office and mobile customer app. All in OutSystems' low-code software in just six months. After that, the software was transferred to NextEnergy so that they can expand the applications themselves. In addition, NextEnergy uses Microsoft applications such as Dynamics and Azure.

Big data

The organization has 'big data'. Large data sets such as customer smart energy meter records, billing information, login details and marketing data. But how do you, as an organization, then use this data to make informed decisions? When an issue arose that needed to be substantiated with data, a query was built “just as quickly”, extracting data directly from the source. This led to the fact that retrieved data had different definitions and meta-data, many ad-hoc reports were created and no history of the same data could be consulted. To combine information from different systems, Excel was often used as the preferred tool. Pragmatic but with many limitations, especially when using large data sets. So a viscous and ad-hoc process. And because the organization has grown so much, data reliability has become increasingly important when making strategic decisions.

Working together on a solution

Gert-Jan Kampkuiper has been the CFO of NextEnergy for several months now and has gained extensive experience in finance, but also in business intelligence at his previous employers PwC and Signature Foods. Just before his arrival, Quatronic started setting up a number of PowerBI reports. Under Gert-Jan's leadership, Quatronic started at the base. Before reports were built, he wanted to determine the most important KPIs with the management team. Some of these KPIs are data-driven. Quatronic has made the translation between these data-driven KPIs and the existing source data sets. This took into account, among other things, making use of data uniformity, the use of timestamps and a central storage location. The very first thing that was needed was to set up a data lake with all relevant data from source systems.

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We started setting up a data lake in Azure Synapse. This is an all-in-one solution that includes data loading, storage and analysis functionality. Through a separate environment, you keep the analysis and storage of data separate and prevent analyses from disrupting the operation. In addition, we believe in facilitating self-service analytics, so we set up the platform so that anyone can make reports without being dependent on a data analyst.

We set up the data lake according to a medallion architecture with a bronze, silver and gold layer. This stands for the quality of the data that is increased in each layer. Data from the various source systems enters the bronze layer unprocessed. The silver layer then structures the data to create an overview of the large amount of information. Historical perspectives are also stored in this layer. This makes it possible to analyse the change in processes. Consider, for example, the lead time of a customer's registration process or the payment period for invoices. In the gold layer, tables are combined so that they are ready for analysis.

“In our weekly management update, I can now get the most up to date information at the touch of a button. That alone saves so much time.”

Reports in Excel that previously had to be manually provided with new data are now directly linked to the gold layer and are automatically updated with the latest data. Gert-Jan: “In our weekly management update, I can now get the most up to date information at the touch of a button. That alone saves so much time. ' There are ad-hoc reports within the various departments. We should take on this as our next project. The great thing about a stable data lake is that we can add new data quickly, so that all reports come directly from one source and everyone looks at the same data. '

The future

There are even more advanced plans. There is still a physical whiteboard in the financial department; in a while, a sleek digital dashboard with the company's state of affairs should be built. “We can now also support our gut feeling with data”. The coming period will focus on training employees and including them in the changed way of working. The next phase for NextEnergy is to create new insights and predictions based on data.

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