Mitra Brings Digital Ingenuity to a Utility Giant

UK PUBLIC UTILITY

In 2016, two of the UK’s largest utility companies joined forces as a result of new government regulations, creating one of the UK’s largest business utility suppliers, The Client. Serving all types of business customers, from small independents to the largest national chains, the aim was to make the two companies more competitive, improve customer service and increase the number of products on offer. A major systems integration project was required to share data and consolidate systems.

THE CHALLENGE

This was a complex, large scale project to knit together the systems and data of two vast utility companies. The Client needed to access customer data seamlessly from numerous sources, including customer contact details; interactive voice response (IVR); meter readings; finance data (bills and payments); customer bank details, and utility records. This data was held in disparate locations across both company’s legacy systems, including CRMs, ERPs and finance. The Client knew that the scale of the task called for a highly adaptable middleware platform and chose WSO2 as the best solution. As a WSO2 Premier Integration Partner, Mitra was chosen for its middleware expertise based on experience implementing projects of a similar scale and complexity.

“There was super communication and quick responsiveness on the project, considering how we were working remotely and mainly via email.”

The ClientProgramme UAT Manager

THE SOLUTION

Mitra’s experienced integration experts proposed an architecture stack that would utilise WSO2 technology to produce a resilient integration platform. It would be able to cater for the high volume of transactions expected and guaranteed on-time message delivery. The team worked rigorously on refining user stories developing a full understanding of the project requirements before starting over 40 complex integrations that were required. A major part of the project was the integration of two legacy ERP systems, both of which had existing connections to and from multiple third-parties through numerous APIs. Simply integrating the systems was not enough, additional elements such as email alerts and archiving email messages was required. Capabilities such as Managed File Transfer (MFT) and Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP) were incorporated as part of the integration work carried out by Mitra.

Full Integration

Moving to a fully integrated middleware platform was a critical element for The Client, and fundamental to success. Mitra knew WSO2’s Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) would be the natural fit. Instead of each application communicating directly with each other, they simply communicate with the ESB, which handles transforming and routing of messages to their appropriate destinations.

Holistic Approach

As a large and complex project one of Mitra’s first tasks was to understand how both platforms worked at an enterprise level and design a roadmap for integration. This way Mitra could see, and importantly demonstrate to the client, how each of over 40 integration pieces worked individually and as part of the larger project.

Agile Development

The entire project was delivered on-time using a high-rigour “two-weekly agile” process. The Client clearly saw the progress made fortnightly with an option to customise their requirements without impacting the overall timeline.

THE RESULT

This was an exceptionally successful project where Mitra built and deployed a resilient, fully integrated WSO2 platform, allowing two large companies to comply with government regulations and seamlessly merge their operations without negative impact to their customers or business.

The WSO2 architecture used in the project included 7 API Managers, 2 Enterprise Service Bus implementations, 2 Message Brokers, and 2 Data Analytics Servers across 4 Environments. Mitra Innovation also provides ongoing maintenance and support to The Client via a comprehensive support model.

BUSINESS BENEFITS

Seamless migration from two different legacy systems to fully integrated middleware platform via Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)

Fully integrated, seamless customer experience post-merger

Faster data access, speeding up operations and the swift resolution of customer queries

Better business insight with easier access to critical business data