Transitioning the CIS Billing System for a Retail Energy Provider

A closer look at how we closed the gap between ABP and EDI formats to deliver time-sensitive data exchange.

The Challenge

Big Data partnered with a retail electricity provider in Houston, Texas, that specializes in serving commercial and industrial (C&I) customers in deregulated U.S. electricity markets. The company needed help streamlining the process of converting their back-end Customer Information System (CIS) billing system to Excelergy Revenue Manager (RM) — specifically due to a difference between formats. Excelergy RM’s used a fixed length flat file format for automatic bill payment (ABP), while the industry standard for the electricity provider’s customers was an electronic data interchange (EDI) X12 format.

The Solution

To address the challenge caused by the incompatible file formats and ensure accuracy across inbound and outbound data, we introduced the following process:

Translate Inbound and Outbound Data: We translated information from ABP to EDI file formats, and vice versa.

  • Translate Inbound and Outbound Data: We translated information from ABP to EDI file formats, and vice versa.
  • Store Files on a Secure File Transfer Protocol Server (SFTP): We placed files on a SFTP site to facilitate real-time processing, distribution and retrieval. Alerts were configured to notify users if outbound files sat in the SFTP inbox for more than an hour.
  • Unified Technology: The electricity provider’s transactional data, to and from the market, was loaded into a database on prod-03 using our proprietary key format. They also used our payment portal for outbound processes.
  • Data Warehouse: This centralized system was used to store large amounts of data that could be used for load forecasting, scheduling, pricing and other critical functions.

The Outcome

With a combination of third-party and proprietary tools, Big Data introduced a streamlined process to help the customer access data easily. We processed inbound and outbound data in real-time and created a solution to ensure that time-sensitive data moves efficiently through the SFTP inbox.