Zenergi

By partnering with Xperience and implementing Sage CRM, Zenergi has eliminated its paper-based processes, automating it’s complex energy procurement services. They can now efficiently manage energy contracts, bringing £1,751,891 in customer savings since 2015 and supporting customer retention rates of 98 per cent.

Graham Cooke, Zenergi’s Managing Director explains, “Back in the day we used Sage CRM purely as a contact database for phone numbers, email addresses and so on. We had various spreadsheets; in fact our entire business was pretty much run on spreadsheets to validate bills, store contract records and data, produce quotes, etc. We were with another software provider but it hadn’t worked out and so, in 2011, we brought in Xperience. With their help we began to customise the software, one module at a time. It’s been a monumental task but now we can safely say that our entire business is within Sage CRM.”

“It took some time to get to a point where everything links into each other and where data integrity is one hundred percent,” Graham continues. “We now have a complex contract and billing platform that ‘does exactly what it says on the tin’ and which has been especially developed for us so we can meet the needs of customers both now and in the future.”

“We have undertaken a lot of customisation, for instance Bill Validation was an entire project in itself. It allows us to check customers’ energy bills against the rates originally quoted and authorise them for payment while updating records with actual consumption values which can be compared to forecasts. Our billing ports have seen enormous changes, with less need for manual input. There is also a mechanism to import and validate bills en masse which saves endless hours of data entry.”

“Step-by-step every area of the business has been transformed. We recently started to use the Self Service module which allows customers to access their own data and we plan to enhance this further. That’s the nature of us as a business, always looking at what’s next and how we can improve on things!”

“Sage CRM has had a massive impact on our business and the visibility it’s given us is huge. Long gone are the days where we were knee-deep in spreadsheets and where reporting was a nightmare. Now at the click of a button we can see how many bills or queries we have. Basically if a task can be automated then it’s been automated!

“In terms of what we’ve managed to create, our CRM system is totally unique. There is nothing else like it out there. We recently moved our Head Office into the University of Southampton Science Park at Chilworth. We had to produce a project paper around the R&D we’d been doing, mainly as criteria for being invited onto the park and they were blown away with what we’d done and, to be fair, Xperience were at the centre of that.”

“We are a different business as a result of the work we’ve done with Xperience. It’s been a real partnership. Their guys have been brilliant at getting to understand our business. In fact they understand it so well they could probably join our payroll tomorrow!”