Version 1 Delivers IT Roadmap to Support Flogas' Vision

Flogas Ireland, a DCC Business, is a leading supplier of Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG), Natural Gas & Electricity across the island of Ireland, servicing a diverse range of market sectors and applications including the industrial, commercial, domestic, catering, agricultural and automotive markets.

Flogas has been in partnership with Version 1 since 2015, when they decided to enter into the Irish electricity supply market. Version 1 has had the privilege to support Flogas along this journey through our managed services capability, providing the ramp-up of technical resources as required to achieve its major IT milestones as it grew and expanded into the commercial and residential markets.

Long Term Relationship

Utilising Version 1’s Utilities Market Platform (UMP)

From the outset, Flogas utilised Version 1’s Utilities Market Platform (UMP) to fast track their entry to the electricity market. The UMP is a digital accelerator specifically for the Irish utilities sector comprising of a customer care and comprehensive billing solution serving residential and commercial customers. Flogas selected this platform as it is designed to get a customer to the point of market readiness in the fastest time possible.

The UMP is fully customisable to adapt to specific customer processes and additional functionality. In addition, it is built to address the long-term strategic goal of an IT solution that can be configured to meet the changing landscape of the energy supply business.

Since 2015, Flogas has acquired a number of electricity supply companies as it works to grow into a larger electricity provider, and Version 1 has supported Flogas to further customise the UMP and to build a number of solutions to address requirements. For example, these solutions include Enhanced Electronic Billing, Customer Support, Regulatory Requirements, and a number of connection services that would eliminate more manual processes in a move towards more efficient back office solutions leveraging API Development.

Building on a comprehensive track record that began with the first new entrant into the deregulated electricity market in Ireland, Version 1 has extensive experience in the energy sector providing a range of services to our energy customers right across our capabilities.

Leveraging Version 1’s Expertise

Building on their strategic partnership…

Flogas and Version 1 worked on a number of solutions in late 2019 that would enable them to better serve their customer base and to meet regulatory changes:

• Electronic Billing Solution to serve the organisations newly acquired residential customers.
• Smart Metering Advisory and Development
• Back Office Automation development.

Flogas chose Version 1 to deliver this solution due to the ongoing managed service Version 1 provides for their electricity platform. This positive relationship built the trust and foundation for Flogas to move forward with Version 1 in a partnership on their journey from commercial only to both commercial and residential gas and electricity.

Outsourcing the development of their strategic roadmap to Version 1 enabled Flogas to access the skills and breadth of experience required to deliver the solution successfully while its own internal IT staff could remain focused on supporting activities such as business processes and further development of their strategic goals. Flogas had a strong strategy and vision for how the solution should work and Version 1 provided the support and capacity needed for the Planning, Strategic Leadership, Architectural Support, Cloud Infrastructure & Software Development.

Achievements

Successful Delivery

As is commonplace in the Utilities sector, Flogas needed a partner who would deliver a solution to tight deadlines driven by sector regulations. Version 1 was empathetic to the customer’s needs and was able to support Flogas in their expected timelines, ramping up and down resources to allow development to be completed on time. Version 1 successfully delivered the Electronic Billing Solution to Flogas on time and on budget.

The Electronic Billing Solution has replaced manual time-intensive processes, improving operational security, and also eradicating the natural risk of human error associated with manual operations.

Best in Class Managed Service

Flogas made the decision to transition the back-office Solutions into Version 1’s best in class Managed Service Practice where monitoring of the solutions can be observed and supported. With Version 1 already providing a proactive managed service for the UMP, adding the back-office solution to the support contract ensures an end-to-end view of the entire solution.

As part of the managed service, Version 1 continuously look to improve the solution ensuring that it still meets the needs of Flogas and remains aligned to the company’s objectives with a rapidly growing customer base.

…Delivered.

Following the successful delivery of the Automation Solutions, Flogas was able to realise the following benefits:

•  Reduction in the costs associated with employee time and effort due to manual processes being automated
• Step towards the cloud, lower running costs
• Risk of human-error greatly reduced as manual data input is now automated
• Strong position achieved in terms of data security – for example; mitigating risk of GDPR data breaches
• Capacity increased for Flogas employees to focus on other business objectives with Version 1 handling the support, changes, and break fixes for the solution
• Agile delivery resulting in regulatory deadlines being met.
• Accelerated onboarding of acquired customer base

Version 1 and Flogas continue to work together to achieve further business benefits through IT improvements.

Testimonial from Ben Fuller, Special Projects Manager, Flogas

“Our most time-intensive back-office and operational tasks have been automated with the delivery of the Electronic Billing Solution, enabling our employees to divert effort to higher-value activities as we continue to expand our business across the residential market. This solution places our business in an advantageous position to scale flexibly and quickly to meet any increases in customer demand and business growth.

The solution was delivered on time, under strict timelines which is extremely important to meet the regulatory requirements within the energy and utilities sector. The close relationship built between Version 1 and Flogas has also resulted in further positive benefits as we have found in Version 1 a partner who really cares about our business, displaying empathy to our needs and priorities.

Version 1 have been a great help in producing and updating our systems in time before the industry IPT window.  The UMP team were able to take both the industry documentation and our internal requirements to produce a design that not only achieves all the requirements necessary for us to upgrade to smart metering, but also includes logic to prevent any mistakes from being made which will only benefit Flogas reputation within the industry.

Also, during the smart metering test phase, the team have been on hand to make changes to the system and tables without any issues and provide HyperCare which has removed any anxiety about potential issues and created a smooth process allowing us to complete IPT on time.”