“This new version of Sparkplug is better than the previous system we had in so many ways, it’s truly top-notch!” – Tony Manganello

Tony Manganello - Vice President, P2P Energy

Power 2 Profit Energy Solutoins (P2P) is an energy advisor & consulting firm specializing in procuring & trading energy for customers in deregulated markets.

In 2009, Power 2 Profit Energy Solutions (P2P) began their longstanding relationship with Enerex’s predecessor, CORE (Collaborative Operations for Retail Energy). P2P’s team wanted a software solution for their retail energy brokerage and decided to take a leap of faith with the newly developed CORE software, which promised automation at a time where every aspect of managing retail energy was manual. 

History of Enerex :
A Revolution in the Making

CORE
A Houston-based software consulting company, Entrance Software develops CORE (Collaborative Operations for Retail Energy) to create a more collaborative deal process and improve Brokers' ability to manage commissions.
Energy Frameworks & Powermatrix merged to become ENEREX
Energy Frameworks
Entrance Software spins out Energy Frameworks to pursue the CORE vision and be totally dedicated to changing retail energy.
Energy Frameworks & Powermatrix merged to become ENEREX
Powermatrix
Powermatrix is formed out of a New Jersey-based software development company, Infomatrix, develops a product for retail energy brokers called Sparkplug.
Powermatrix and Energy Frameworks merge
The two industry leaders in retail energy sales software join forces to create the de facto standard in retail energy sales software, combining their products and services, retaining the Powermatrix brand. The consolidation of their broker-facing capabilities begins.
Enerex.com
Enerex launch
Enerex launches as the new brand and vision for created a trusted data platform for the retail energy industry.
2007
2014
2016
August, 2019
August 2020

The Situation:

Fast forward from P2Ps initial sign-on in 2009 to August of 2020, now that Enerex’s merger and rebrand are complete it was time to start transitioning every customer from CORE to Enerex’s new and improved Software as a Service (SaaS) platform called Sparkplug. For background, Sparkplug is the #1 retail energy sales platform in the world, powering over 10% of the commercial and industrial (C&I) transactions with offerings for C&I Brokerage, Aggregators, Community Choice/Municipal Aggregations, Mass Markets (D2D, Call center, Kiosk), and online shopping sites.

The transition of CORE customers to Sparkplug was essential for both Enerex and the overall consumer’s success.  As our VP of Sales and Marketing, Jason Beck, stated “As the companies that owned CORE and Sparkplug both merged to create Enerex, we all saw the potential to take the best of CORE, the best of Sparkplug, and create a system that had 120% of the functionality of either platform individually.  While CORE has some amazing features, Sparkplug was a future proof solution with a team of 20+ engineers that already knew the code base.

The Challenges:

In early 2020, Enerex’s Customer Success Managers were tasked with informing clients of the CORE software about the upcoming transition from CORE to Sparkplug and when P2P learned about the upcoming transition they noted that “When it was announced that Energy Frameworks/CORE and Enerex/Sparkplug were merging, we surely listened to other platform pitches – but with the long-standing 11-year relationship with Enerex’s leadership team, the new version of Sparkplug was our first option as its success spoke for itself.Among the typical concerns about switching platforms, P2P was stricken with various concerns regarding their future success with Sparkplug. Among those were security of their priceless data and the accuracy of future data imports, the knowledge curve of learning a new system, and having a resource they could refer to if they had future issues.

The Solutions:

Any retail energy brokerage firm will agree, data is the most valuable asset of their business, and protecting that data is paramount to success and equity.  P2P thoroughly agrees with this point and raised the concern about the overall safety of their data, as well as various other anxieties. So, to ensure all of P2P‘s concerns were evaluated, our Customer Success team interviewed P2P’s Vice President, Tony Manganello, about the transition process to ensure that all of his concerns were effectively addressed.

We found that Mr. Manganello was anxious about the data migration process and said that he feared “…that our private data and other information would get lost or misplaced during the transition from CORE to Sparkplug.” He added that “However, our Customer Success Manager, Lacey Price, reassured us that Enerex has safely migrated hundreds of other broker’s data into Sparkplug, and this would be a breeze.”

 The Enerex Team understands Mr. Manganello’s fears completely, and we understand that the most valuable aspect of your business is the data you’ve compiled, so we make it our mission to protect every piece of information as if it was our own. Therefore, it’s only fitting that Enerex has achieved the ISO-27001 certification which helps in meeting requirements of GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) & assures Enerex remains the #1 Trusted data exchange for retail energy.  The requirements to receive ISO 27001 certification include: implementing and maintaining an Information Security Management System – which is a systematic approach to managing sensitive information. This certification is the gold standard in information security and has been achieved by various big-name businesses like Amazon, Apple, Google & Microsoft Azure.

Another common anxiety for businesses like P2P regarding transitioning to a new platform is finding the time to learn a whole new system. We understand that time is money and not everyone has the flexibility in their schedule to learn a whole new program; that’s why every customer who signs with an Enerex product gets assigned a Customer Success Manager who is dedicated to showing your team how to make the most out of Sparkplug and its robust features. Olivia Chalmin, Director of Customer Success at Enerex mentioned that:

“Over the past few years, we have built a knowledge base with videos and how-to articles for our customers to access training on-demand, launched real-time chat and continue to build upon our onboarding processes to exceed our customers’ expectations.”

Likewise, Mr. Manganello mentioned that his Customer Success Manager, Lacey Price, made the “…transition from CORE to Sparkplug easy and time efficient. Having to learn a whole new system can be tricky, but Lacey made the learning curve easy to understand. Lacey has been truly amazing throughout this whole process, in fact, she deserves a raise for her efforts! She is always responsive to any concerns my team has, knows the system in-and-out and gets issues resolved with ease!” 

Mr. Manganello’s worries were resolved in just a few days for he stated that “[Enerex was] able to port our data from CORE to Sparkplug in over a single weekend and then into a sandbox environment where we double checked to see if the data was migrated correctly. This efficiency exceeded our expectations and truly proved that Enerex was the right choice for us. “This new version of Sparkplug is better than the previous system we had in so many ways, it’s truly top-notch.”

Conclusion:

Just as Tony Manganello, and so many other brokers have said, “Sparkplug has changed the way we do business and has increased the speed and efficiency in how we serve our end-use clients.”  We value our long-term relationship with P2P. We appreciate their extensive knowledge and industry experience. Their customers surely benefit from their solution-based consulting approach to energy management.

Do you have similar concerns to Energy Software companies that P2P Energy had?  Are you ready to take a look at a tool that can give you precious time back in your day, ensure your data stays your data, and ensure you are getting paid on the accounts by your suppliers you have booked with them?  Then don’t wait any longer!  Click here to book a demonstration of Sparkplug, the #1 (by far) Energy Brokerage Management Software.

About Power 2 Profit energy solutions

P2P is one of the most trusted electricity & natural gas Risk Management companies and has been providing services to Commercial & Industrial end-users since 2009. P2P also provides a wide range of Energy Advisory Consulting services that includes solar, co-generation, wind, lighting, and building envelope projects.

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Sparkplug is the #1 retail energy sales platform in the world, powering over 10% of the commercial and industrial (C&I) transactions with offerings for C&I Brokerage, Aggregators, Community Choice/Municipal Aggregations, Mass Markets (D2D, Call center, Kiosk), and online shopping sites.