The Mobile Energy Sector - taking critical steps to strengthen legacy processes to go digital with low-code

Most companies today are still working with processes that are 15 to 20 years old. That’s an eternity in a world where technology is rapidly changing, leaving enterprises with decreased productivity compared to their competition that has fully modernized with mobile and digital processes. That reality is especially true in today’s utility & energy sector, where companies are aggressively turning to renewable energy options to address growing environmental and climate concerns across the world.

Organizations that take critical steps to strengthen their processes with mobile and digital options see worthwhile benefits that make their enterprise more competitive. But many companies find it expensive to support such transformations quickly. That’s why low-code and no-code app development platforms are key –– they considerably reduce the threshold, concern, complexity and time to market – this is where mobile energy apps come into play.

In the energy sector, expanding both mobile and offline capabilities, as workers are often in remote locations with little or no network access, is a must.

Green energy pioneer, Becour, needed to find a platform that would be easily accessible, stable and flexible,future proof, and scale at pace with the company’s growth. Due to the nature of their business, the platform needed to be able to integrate to various internal systems whilst also being able to connect to external platforms. This is why they decided to do all development on Neptune DXP – porting everything into Neptune DXP – Open Edition on AWS.

Becour had so much success with Neptune DXP that they also became one of the first wave of customers to utilize Neptune DXP Cloud – a fully managed public-cloud offering. Being able to run all of their core business systems on a managed public cloud has allowed them to focus more on what is mission critical. This allowed the company to continue their mission of helping companies manage their renewable energy portfolios in a simple and credible way.

Likewise, Sweden-based utility company Vattenfall, a leading European energy company committed to making fossil-free living possible within one generation, needed solutions to stay competitive while meeting aggressive renewable energy goals. To do so, Vattenfall needed a standardized workflow and tight control of IT and development costs. They also needed out-of-the-box offline capabilities.

With some sites that are very remote, offshore, and in rugged terrain, field workers needed the ability to work offline for extended periods of time. Neptune Software and it’s leading low-code app development platform allowed Vattenfall to develop more streamlined processes, reducing the number of screens to complete a task from 20-30 down to 1. They also had the ability to easily and quickly make adjustments during the app development and deployment process, without having to add any hardware or additional technology infrastructure. And with mobile apps that include offline capabilities, users no longer needed to stop by the office to document their day’s work.

Improved information flow and more complete data about equipment status and new issues also allowed Vattenfall to better manage their maintenance backlog, leading to faster, shorter lead times for repair. And as Vattenfall increases their renewable energy fleet level, more complete data and better information flow will decrease unscheduled maintenance and increase planning capabilities, which will continue to lower costs and provide a key competitive advantage.

The need for innovation in the utilities and energy sector –– and with it, mobile energy digital solutions and the ability to adapt quickly, is not going anywhere. Overhauling operations that companies have used for decades might seem like a daunting task. But the consequences of forgoing modernized solutions could be dire to a company’s bottom line. The benefits of mobilizing and digitizing, whether it’s saving money on paper, working offline in remote locations but still capturing data real-time, speeding up response times, or making the workforce more efficient and reducing management time are worth the investment.