With powercloud, BTC and Klafka & Hinz as technology partners, Accenture is developing a new billing platform for the energy industry.

It is a project without parallel: In January, the Thüga Group began a Europe-wide tendering process for its billing solution Thüga-Abrechnungsplattform (TAP) intended for suppliers, network operators and meter operators in the energy sector. Thüga is Germany’s largest cooperative network of municipal energy and water providers with more than 100 municipal utilities in the group. The consulting firm Accenture has now been awarded the contract to develop and roll out TAP as the general contractor and has brought on board powercloud, BTC and Klafka & Hinz as its technology partners. powercloud and Accenture have already been working together for years. This intensive cooperation was one of the pivotal considerations in Thüga’s decision and could also be applied to similar platforms in other European countries. With around 15.5 million metering points right now, TAP is considered one of the largest IT projects on the market.

The platform is designed to set a new standard in the energy sector. A total of 38 municipal utilities and energy utilities have chosen to use TAP. The solution offers customers competitive services at economical prices based on the pay-per-use model. Just like powercloud, the system is a modular software-as-a-service platform built on a cloud architecture and sets new standards in terms of technology. This means users will be able to select the elements they need from the modular system.

On the platform, powercloud acts as the core system that handles financial processes for all market roles in the energy sector, including billing, receiving payments, managing payment reminders and ensuring compliance with regulatory requirements placed on market communication. TAP can help make billing processes in the commodity sector especially efficient and largely automated – with correspondingly lower costs. In addition, powercloud will manage all master data and take account of all regulatory changes in the market to relieve users of the burdens of laborious adjustment processes. With the help of powercloud, the new platform can also reduce the time-to-market of new products in the energy sector.  Other features include network usage management and contract management.

The platform is a response to the fact that many energy utilities are struggling with the same challenges, which necessitate fresh new approaches. For example, the increasingly complex regulatory requirements on the calculation of feed-in remuneration have pushed the billing solutions of many network operators to their limits. Increasing competition, along with growing pressure to invest due to legal regulations, has also forced energy utilities to intensify their cost-cutting. Using common platforms and services presents a significant opportunity for these companies.

One major challenge for TAP is that it must meet a wide range of needs of both large and small companies. As a standardized machine room of the energy sector, powercloud is particularly well suited to tackle this task. The well-established solution is already used by many companies of all scales and sizes – ranging from start-ups to DAX companies.

To highlight the potential of such a platform, powercloud worked with Accenture, BTC and Klafka & Hinz to offer a series of webinars during the tendering process. For example, the webinars illustrated the meter-to-cash process for all customer groups, market roles and product categories and also demonstrated what intelligent automation of mass processes can look like in the complex interaction between billing and energy data management.

powercloud is proud to be a part of this mega IT project for the energy sector. Clinching the project is a major milestone in company’s history.