Utilities Regulator Application Replatform

Case Study: Utilities Regulator Application Replatform

Overview

A developing country’s energy market regulator oversees energy contracts between generators, distributors and consumers, also known as “energy market actors”. The regulator needed to improve the user experience of its contract management application in order to make it easier for new alternative energy generators to do business. Itzdata replatformed their legacy application and made it easier for energy market actors to establish contracts.

Situation

The regulator had a legacy contract management application developed using Oracle Forms/Reports 6i. The energy market actors were required to send their contract terms to the regulator in a specific file format or physically go to the regulator’s offices and enter them manually. During any given week it was common to see several users entering their information at the offices.

Issues

Because of the fast growing alternative energy market, the regulator wanted to make it easier for actors to use their contract management system, thereby enabling new generators to enter the market easily.

Solution

The regulator brought in Itzdata to help assess the legacy system and design and build a new web-based application. Itzdata recommended that the new application be built using the latest Java technology available on Oracle’s Application Development Framework (ADF) and reuse as much functionality as possible from the legacy application’s optimized processes.

Implementation

The complete redesign process took 6 months in two workstreams:

  1. Itzdata consultants performed a detailed analysis and documentation of the legacy application’s business processes, user experience, business rules and reports.
  2. The application was redesigned and built using Oracle ADF while maintaining a similar user interface to the legacy application, thus reducing users’ resistance to change. Buttons, menus, screens and functionality were configured very similarly.

Results

  • A completely new application was implemented that inherited the functional maturity of the legacy application while using new characteristics enabled by Oracle ADF and Java.
  • Even before going live, end users were impressed by the enormous benefits of using a web application, being able to access it through a browser and mobile devices.
  • • Energy market actors now have more agility during contract negotiations and they are able to review and confirm contract terms with more time and flexibility before submitting them to the regulator.