Methodia

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m an independent contractor, providing services to a gas and power company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Methodia?

I was engaged by my client to provide project management for the development of a customer portal.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They developed a customer web portal for my client. The portal offers self-service functionality to energy consumers. Customers can view bills, see their account status, and raise queries. It was an off-the-shelf solution that was tailored to my client.

What is the team composition?

On their side, there was a minimum of 5–6 people staffed to the project.

How did you come to work with Methodia?

They were engaged directly by my client.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from October 2019–August 2020.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

The quality was very good. We were able to turn around the whole delivery in a very short period of time.

How did Methodia perform from a project management standpoint?

They were very professional and pulled together a strong team. We followed a well-structured methodology that was agreed upon by all parties.

We set timelines, and they met them, even working over the winter holidays to do so. There were centralized points of communication that could provide additional resources whenever needed. When we encountered resourcing problems, we were able to solve them easily that way.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They have a very good understanding of the gas and electric utility industry. Their team can pull together to solve problems in sticky situations, even if it means working long hours. We appreciated having their impressive network of resources at our disposal. They were able to turn things around very quickly.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They’re involved in a lot of work. Sometimes our preferred resources were unavailable because they were staffed on other projects. It didn’t cause any delays for us, but it was something I noticed.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Definitely engage them and listen to their advice. They bring a lot to the table, caring more about the success of the project than the money they'll make from the endeavor.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CIO of Overgas, a natural gas distributor.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Methodia?

We needed someone to develop our corporate information system.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They implemented our utility system which is a complex system including CRM, billing, asset management, maintenance, and workflow tools. We use this system for all our main business processes in the company. It generates invoices and collects all payments from different online and offline channels. 

One of the main aspects of their implementation is the Asset and Maintenance Management system (AMM). With this system, we manage the gas network and all facilities related to the gas network. They created a mobile application that is integrated with the utility system. The application shows which tasks users have to do each day. After that, the system automatically records the GPS location of the employee, the time, and more.

They used Java to create the main utility system and PostgreSQL for the database. For the mobile app, they used Java as well. They also used HTML5, JavaScript, and CSS. 

What is the team composition?

There are 25-30 people. They have a team that includes business analysts, QA, and developers.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent about $1.7 million.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in May 2013, and the work is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

We’re very happy with them. We increased the performance of our employees around 35% over the last four years, especially when we changed to working with mobile devices. We also decreased the cost for the maintenance of the network by €250,000 per year.

How did Methodia perform from a project management standpoint?

Project management was good. They helped us to improve our business processes. With their help, we changed the business processes to work in combination with the new system to get better results.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They have people specializing in everything. Whenever we have a question or need something, there's a team member that can help us.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Sometimes we expect something to be quicker. They’re good, but they can always be better.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I don’t have any advice.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the managing director of Dyce Energy, a UK energy supplier. We currently provide gas to business customers.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Methodia?

We needed a billing system that would allow us to convert units from energy meter into kilowatt-hours that we could present in a bill our customers. We were working offline for the first couple of months, which was time-consuming and allowed for human error; it also didn’t have the ability to scale up to bill thousands and thousands of customers. We needed a platform, and we knew we wanted something cloud-based and cost-effective. We also wanted a partner that could develop the system with us.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Methodia reviewed our current billing tools and got to know the way we wanted to bill our customers. They wanted to understand all the tax implications such as VAT (value-added tax). They built a billing platform that holds all of our customer data in a central place. Customers can create accounts and login to the platform to see their latest bills and usage, submit meter readings, and generally control all their energy costs online. Methodia also built us a back-office interface that allows us to bill and control customer data.

We’ve used Methodia for related projects since the initial development. One of the things we agreed on midway through the project was to develop a customer app for iOS and Android. It’s a simplified version of the customer portal we had, and it allows customers to log-in on smartphones and tablets. It was a relatively simple project, compared to the billing system. It took us 2–3 months to develop and launch the app.

They also created industry data ports, to allow us to transfer industry messages. It was another significant project that was two months in the making.

Our CRM 360 system is in the center, and everything is bolted onto it, such as the data flows system, the customer portal, the customer app, the broker portal, and Methodia’s Cockpit.

We worked together on the design. Methodia has a “vanilla package”, which is the standard package they offer to every supplier, and includes a logo and a standard interface. However, because our company was relatively new to the UK, Methodia worked to ensure that it was presented in a way that the UK would understand. This included simple things like using pounds sterling and the format in which energy information is presented in a bill. 

The last project we did with Methodia was a simple customer service tool for our customer support team. We didn’t want to release the whole system to our customer service team, so we’ve made a simplified service tool that, for all intents and purposes, has all the data in the main CRM 360 system, but much better on the eyes. It’s presented in a way that makes it much easier to find information when a customer requests simple thing like accounts, meter points, and recent bills. It’s all presented in a nice, simple format for the customer service team.

We’re starting work on a partner portal in the next few weeks. We will allow our biggest clients to create reports and submit contracts. We’ve created a broker portal and we started this project around four months ago. It will allow us to bill customers, manage their data, and also take care of the sales element in priced contracts. We can make initial quotes and transfer those over to our CRM 360 solution. We have around 100 partners, and this portal will give us a lot more vision about what they’re doing on a day-to-day basis. We’ll be able to see every price, quote, and tender. At the moment, we’re blind to that activity; all we get is the contract coming through. The broker portal is a significant project that’s about to start with Methodia.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

Around 75% of our customer base is signed up to Methodia’s online portal, whether it’s by mobile or web. I think this is a success in itself, given that not every energy supplier in the UK has a customer portal or app. We’ve separated ourselves a bit from other competitors, and it’s given us a competitive edge.

We have 100 brokers pricing through us. It’s difficult to say how many more have signed up with us as a result of Methodia’s work, but, when we first started speaking to these brokers, we had very little to showcase in terms of system tools and the ability to manage their customers. Now, they have access to a broker portal where they can secure contracts themselves, and see how their customers are going to view their bills and raise queries. We have a great set of tools to sell gas energy to our network, whereas we had very little before. They’ve given us the ability to offer a package to the broker.

We’ve also had some good feedback from a customer point of view. Users can log into the system on behalf of their own users, and it’s easy to use and understand. They like the way their bills are presented, our reconciliation statements, and the way the system credits and debits itself. We’ve had good feedback from the industry about it, although we haven’t heard from individual customers.

 How did Methodia perform from a project management standpoint?

Their project management team is clear and concise. Methodia creates project plans, see those through, and share reports on a weekly basis, to make sure we all understand what the goals are. If there’s a delay or problem, they’ll stay late and work hard to make sure we’re getting things done on time. They’ve been genuinely great from start to finish, especially our project manager. They understood everything we wanted them to do, and they came back to us when they had a question.

We built a real connection and trust very quickly. They weren’t scared to showcase their systems with demos, and there was a lot of videoconferencing to start with.

As we’ve grown the relationship, we’ve become more integrated with Methodia’s back-office

team. We flew out there in June 2018 to meet them. We were speaking to them every day, but we’d never met them face to face. We have a stronger relationship now because we’re dealing with 8–9 people from their team, not 1–2. They’re resolving issues with our system on a daily basis, so we need to speak to them every day. We’ve gotten to trust them more after meeting them, and we’ve given them more work as a result.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Methodia’s motto is “If you grow, I grow”, and we love it. We’re an aspiring business, and the idea that a supply-chain partner wants us to grow is really inspiring. The fact that they’re happy to work with us to get there gives us a lot more ambition and drive.

The teams themselves are great. They work hard, they work late, and they get everything done. They’ve made some mistakes, but they rectified them. The language barrier hasn’t been a problem.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Methodia is system-focused, and they can sometimes forget about the customer. For example, if the industry thinks we have to do it one way, that’s what they’ll suggest. It’s important for them to make sure they continue to listen to the end user, namely suppliers.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

Clients should visit Methodia’s offices and meet their team, and get a level of trust in the team. It’s important to fully integrate with Methodia, and not just rely on Skype and phone calls. Meeting them face to face and realizing there are people behind the names will make for a better relationship.

It’s also important to review the terms and conditions properly before shaking hands. Methodia will honor those terms, and we haven’t had any issues in this area. I suggest clients demo the systems offered by Methodia and make sure they understand what’s in the vanilla package.