US business guru and author Verne Harnish says that “scaling up is every entrepreneur’s dream — and nightmare”. Harnish reckons “hypergrowth is terrifying” and can lead to the demise of many great companies. If you’re looking to scale up a business in a fast-moving and complex sector like energy, that kind of feedback is enough to dent the enthusiasm of even the most ambitious business leaders. If you want to do it right, it makes sense to work with a partner with a solid background in helping companies grow quickly and sustainably. If you want expert assistance to digitally transform a business at scale, you’re in the right place.
Flux’s suite of SaaS products are designed to scale quickly and efficiently - and we’ve got a proven track record of successful mass-market scalability. We’re all about empowering visionary companies who want to lead through the energy transition. In New Zealand, we have more than 350,000 connections running through Meridian Energy (New Zealand’s largest renewable energy retailer) and Powershop (a Meridian-owned sub-brand). In Australia, we have 200,000 connections operating through Powershop AU, Kogan Energy and a third brand (to be launched later in 2021). In the UK, we have 160,000 connections via Powershop UK, nPower and Sainsbury’s Energy. In other words, we’ve got form.
There are a number of reasons why we can help energy retailers to move faster, price smarter and integrate widely. Firstly, our experience has taught us that no two clients are the same, so our highly configurable products can meet a broad range of needs. Flux operates using modern software design and development practices, and our microservices approach allows for faster, more efficient design and deployment across the platform. We’re proud to partner and integrate with leading global software companies including Gorilla, SendGrid, Securiti.ai and Windcave.
This enables our clients to create exceptional customer experiences - and we back that up with high-touch client service. Flux is hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS), which means we can be more agile and responsive to regulatory changes as well as fix issues or implement new features faster. Being Cloud-native makes it easier for us to operate at scale and work on bigger or smaller projects as needed. Flexibill, our Flexible Billing product, removes barriers to entering new markets, offering new products and services, and responding to changing generation, distribution and consumption models.
Want proof? Moving its retail customer base from a legacy platform to Flux has had a directly positive impact on how Meridian Energy runs its business in both New Zealand and Australia. Its New Zealand retail group (Meridian and Powershop NZ) had a 24% lift in volume last year, while Meridian’s Australian business (Powershop AU) lifted 7% in a tough market. Flux has enabled Meridian to streamline its business to move quickly - and the data is already hugely positive. In June 2021, Meridian’s New Zealand retail sales volumes were 12.8% higher than June 2020. At the end of Q4, Meridian’s Australian electricity customer numbers were 4.3% higher than the same time last year. Meridian’s Australian retail sales volumes were 6.5% higher in the same period. We believe switching to Flux has made a huge contribution to this growth because it’s increased the speed at which Meridian is now able to bring new propositions to life for their customers, along with increasing its operator efficiency.
“While no project of this scale is ever a complete walk in the park, our business-led, iterative and agile approach has meant that to date we’ve managed the migration to the Flux platform without any significant service failures or customer experience issues,” says Lisa Hannifin, Meridian’s chief customer officer.
If you need a way to future-proof your energy retail business in a world where decarbonisation is key to survival in every sense, we think it makes sense to talk to us. Or, as Verne Harnish says: “It’s always helpful to learn from those who have already been where you’re about to go.”
