Calpine Corporation streamlines customer service and discovers the untapped value of data with AlphaBOLD

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Industry: Manufacturing

Technologies & Tools Used: Microsoft Power Platform and driven by Dataverse, Power Apps, and Azure APIs

About Calpine Corporation

Established in 1984, Calpine corporation is the largest generator of green electricity in the US. They produce electricity from geothermal resources and natural gas with robust commercial, residential, and industrial retail operations. The organization utilizes advanced technologies to produce electricity in a cost-efficient and environmentally friendly manner. They offer power, cogeneration, renewable integration, capacity, and ancillary services to their clientele.

Calpine corporation caters to multiple industries with its reliable power solutions. These industries include wholesale, retail, and renewable energy. The company attributes itself as “modern, clean, efficient, flexible, reliable, and geographically diverse.”

About AlphaBOLD

AlphaBOLD is a technology services company headquartered in Carlsbad, California. We aim to use technology for solving complex business problems. AlphaBOLD specializes in a range of Microsoft services such as Dynamics 365, SharePoint, BI, AI, IoT, DevOps, as well as Oracle NetSuite solutions. AlphaBOLD also provides custom solutions for clients from various industries. As a Microsoft Gold Partner, AlphaBOLD has delivered 100+ successful projects.

AlphaBOLD is committed to redefining success in consulting by enabling its worldwide customer base with digital transformation through harmonizing people, business processes, and technology innovation.

Challenges faced by Calpine Corporation

As a growing business dealing with various clients spread across the US, Calpine corporation faced significant challenges in terms of visibility of financials, customer statuses and requests. Their legacy system was not able to provide them with comprehensive support insight. Furthermore, with a disintegrated legacy system, they had limited access and disparate data stores, and were unable to provide quality customer service to their clients.

1. Lack of visibility:

Calpine corporation has various programs in which they offer different levels of green energy to their customers. The customers can opt in a program, opt up or down from a program, or opt out of the program completely. Calpine Corporation needed a platform that could offer their customer service representatives (CSRs) visibility regarding the program options availed by the clients and other relevant client data such as name, address, location, etc.

2. Lack of integration between billing system and legacy system:

Calpine corporation had an independent billing management software that they used to match their sales and customer payments to ensure minimum revenue leakage. However, since they had not invested in an integrated tool, there was disparity in the entries in the software and their legacy system which often resulted in lost customer data and outdated customer information. This as a result would have a negative impact on sales and marketing endeavors along with customer service.

3. Disparate billing data:

Since the production and distribution of energy was handled by separate parties in Calpine, the billing of the two services was also done separately. Calpine corporation was unable to collect and tabulate that data together in a system. This meant that their CSRs did not have necessary information to deal with client requests, or take meaningful decisions based on real-time data.
Therefore, Calpine Energy Solutions was looking for a solution provider to help them streamline data management through a solution that offered more visibility, cohesiveness, and efficiency in customer service processes.

Streamlining Customer Service – Enter AlphaBOLD

AlphaBOLD and Calpine Corporation worked together to address these challenges and achieve the optimization of enhanced customer service.

The Solution – Power Platform, Dataverse, and API integration:

AlphaBOLD’s experts solved all of Calpine’s challenges with a solution built on top of Microsoft Power Platform using Dataverse Power Apps. It served as a customer service solution for CSRs to provide billing information and opt actions to various enrolment programs. Furthermore, it enabled integration with their billing system, customer data platform, and BI platform. Let’s investigate how the solution catered to the problems faced by the company in detail:

1. Improving visibility and streamlining program management:

AlphaBOLD provided Calpine corporation with the visibility they needed in terms of program management through the platform that integrated all systems for advanced customer insights. Using Dataverse Power Apps, AlphaBOLD provided Calpine with a cloud-based storage option for their data and enabled them to update client information in Dynamics 365. They could easily access all client information from the solution by saving time and energy for the CSRs. This improved their customer service capabilities and provided them with the information required to investigate when and why customers would opt up, down or out of a program. Furthermore, AlphaBOLD’s solution enabled Calpine Corporation to build dashboards that gave them further visibility into employee performance, market competitiveness, program performance, and energy procurement trends. With increased visibility and improved customer service processes, Calpine Corporation focused on creating new and customizable programs to further their operations.

2. Connecting the billing system and legacy system:

AlphaBOLD’s solution for Calpine corporation utilized Power Apps, Dataverse, and Azure API to integrate their billing system with their legacy system. This allowed them to automate business processes and enhance the sharing and embedding of data between the two systems. With Azure’s powerful capabilities, they could now ensure no revenue leakage by keeping their customer data up to date. Additionally, they could now focus on driving deeper engagement with customers through integrated, up-to-date data. Users could experience improved data management with enhanced customer service. It was easier to find new customers, have access to business insights and analytics. This also helped with customer outreach through effective marketing and sales. 

3. Tabulating billing information:

AlphaBOLD’s solution brought together all disparate data stores together in one centralized cloud solution. The CSRs now had access to the necessary information about billing stores, program enrollment, client requests, and complaints. They could now quickly access information and make decisions using real-time data in just a few clicks. This was a significant improvement from their previously manual processes of collecting data from the various parties involved in billing and distribution.

With AlphaBOLD’s power-packed solution, Calpine Corporation could have their data housed in a single system which allowed them to gauge its interactions and historical data. This enabled them to refine their internal customer service capabilities and study the market competitiveness and participation through Power BI fueled dashboards, reporting and insights. Furthermore, with AlphaBOLD’s solution, they were able to improve and define the energy procurement needs of their market.

Read our Microsoft Success Story

TESTIMONIALS

"AlphaBOLD's automation solutions revolutionized our testing process, saving us time and effort after each deployment. The engineers we worked with were extremely knowledgeable and skilled and could assist with writing automation tests and building a broader test-driven development strategy. Their expertise helped us uncover process improvements, enhancing our overall performance. Highly recommended for anyone looking to automate their business processes."
Luke BaumannCo-founder and CTO - Green Project
"Working with AlphaBOLD was transformative. Their automation solutions streamlined our customer onboarding, minimizing manual labor and improving efficiency. Their expertise in creating a robust automation framework was evident throughout the project. Highly satisfied with the results."
Luke BaumannCo-founder and CTO - Green Project

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