PDM introduces flexible pricing and contract management for Alinta Energy

What is Power Deal Manager?

Power Deal Manager (PDM) is an online software application that enables commercial electricity and gas providers and brokers to manage the full sales cycle of Commercial and Industrial (C&I) customers.

Built by Revium, the PDM application generates quotes and contracts, and provides a framework for automating and reporting on C&I electricity contract sales. This provides energy C&I teams with a competitive edge in the industry, as the single-login online platform seamlessly funnels prospects through the sales process.

PDM enables energy retailers and brokers to manage the full sales cycle of Commercial and Industrial customers.

Alinta Energy

Alinta Energy began using PDM in July 2015 as a way of improving and standardising their sales cycles. Specialising in delivering energy solutions to a range of large industries including manufacturing, mining, government and commercial buildings, they also have small to medium clients in the hospitality, finance, manufacturing and government industries.

Alinta Energy’s various C&I sales team use unique and varied pricing models to quote, and therefore required a flexible and robust platform to calculate complex algorithms that relied on their business process and systems.

These algorithms include a multitude of pricing variations, historical and forward calculations, workflow design, contract formats and pricing reporting to help their sales team effectively manage their sales processes.

Goals & Challenges

Alinta Energy required a system that would:

• Adapt to Alinta Energy’s approach to various C&I markets

• Implement pricing, as dictated by pricing personnel, that was easy to use for sales staff

• Distinct pricing methodology focusing less on base rate and more on complex calculations for additional premiums relevant to the specific market

• Calculate the price for various gas and electricity markets (Western Australia and East Coast) considering the differences in the calculation methodology and cost stack make up

• Reduce risk of mis-pricing by allowing sales staff to only amend margins when negotiating prices with customers

• Produce quotes for large multi-site quotes without the sales staff waiting for the pricing result

• Replicate existing documentation, such as offers and contracts, in an automated manner

• Dual handling of SME business sales and C&I markets

• Handle procedural workflows for seamless automation

• Provide a detailed interactive price page detailing breakdown of costs and allowing sales and pricing staff to adjust the price for the client

• Manage gas contracts alongside electricity contracts

• Allow multiple output formats

Solution

Improved management & workflow
PDM can be customised to meet business and sales processes by seamlessly creating workflows to manage sales from end to end. These can all be created, via business logic, with workflow authorisation allows the right Alinta Energy personnel to access and approve various steps along the way.

As an example, a quote can go from a salesperson up to a sales manager. If the sales manager approves the quote, then it can be routed to the legal department for an audit. This workflow can be as complex and custom as required.

PDM also integrates with Alinta’s other business systems, which prevents doubling up of manually transferring streams of data from one platform to another.

Eliminated risk & minimized dependency
By programmatically producing pricing and contracts, PDM dramatically reduces Alinta Energy’s manual data entry and human error as the platform does not require manipulating complex spreadsheets and functions within spreadsheets, nor do they need to save multiple versions of files

Increased accuracy
All energy deal’s pricing is based on Alinta Energy’s C&I pricing model, which allows them to monitor and maintain consistent and mistake-free energy quotes and contracts. PDM acts as a secondary CRM and holds all quotes and contracts data for Alinta customers.

Outcome

Alinta Energy now has a distinct advantage in the marketplace via a dedicated online platform that seamlessly manages the sales process from the prospect stage, through to completed acquisition for the various teams and respective markets.