CASE STUDY | 12 MINUTE READ

Techem’s End-to-End Energy Digitization

Together with implementation partner DCCS, Techem built a customer portal on Liferay DXP that gives property managers and tenants greater transparency, legal assurance, and a better user experience.

Key Takeaways

150,000

homes

2.16M

devices

100%

digitization aimed

Key Takeaways

Fulfill your complex business requirements.
With security, multi-lingual support, and legal compliance non-negotiable, Liferay DXP provided Techem with everything they needed on one platform.
Embrace digitalization even if it seems daunting.
Many of Techem’s manual and paper-based processes had to be digitized, ultimately leading to significant error reduction and happier customers.
Build solutions with the future in mind.
Techem plans to continue leveraging Liferay DXP’s capabilities and the expertise of partner DCCS to implement AI-powered features and continue an 18-country rollout.

Background

Techem is a leading service provider for smart and sustainable buildings and a market leader for consumption-based recording and billing of energy. The company also offers services that cover energy management and resource conservation as well as healthy living and process efficiency in properties. Headquartered in Innsbruck, Techem’s Austrian subsidiary has 250+ employees, managing over 150,000+ homes with 2.16 million metering and recording devices throughout Austria.

Customer Portals

Supplier Portals

Intranets

Challenges

As saving energy while decreasing costs has become paramount in the energy and utilities sector, the importance of digitally available metering data and real-time information has proportionately increased.

In Techem’s pursuit of digitalization, they decided they needed a centralized customer self-service portal that could accommodate the differing needs of customers and target markets. The customer portal would replace error-prone existing processes that relied on paper-based management of consumption data recording and billing as well as tedious email correspondence.

Techem’s complex business requirements, however, provided hurdles on the road to digitalization. The new customer portal would have to:

Meet stringent compliance standards. Tenants need legally required insight into current consumption data in accordance with the EU EED Directive.
Support millions of global users. The solution had to be localizable and scalable while taking country-specific legal regulations and processes into account.
Manage customer information securely. Sensitive account and usage data had to be handled in a completely secure environment.

Thanks to their extensive experience in process digitalization and the implementation of complex portal solutions, we chose business solutions specialist DCCS as our partner and Liferay as our Digital Experience Platform.

Jonathan prokop

Head of Digital business portal & Data Exchange

Implementation

Techem chose Liferay DXP as the technology to build their customer portal solution and brought on DCCS as the implementation partner. Techem took an agile development approach that included stakeholder involvement and intensive testing, in particular for the demands of specific regions and languages. The first prototype was available after just six months.

also see:

Digitize, Automate, and Deploy Smarter Business Processes with a Customer Portal

Results

After a successful launch, the new customer self-service portal now automates and accelerates processes that used to be slow and manual. Gone are the days of paper-based billing and lengthy email exchanges—these processes have been digitalized from end to end.

The customer portal offers users a variety of benefits including:

Increased transparency. With billing digitized, customers have better insight into their consumption rates and pricing.
Better user experiences for both property managers and tenants. Property managers can quickly look up information like location and meter reading, administration, and billing. They’re also able to select properties based on parameters and view and compare consumptions. Tenants can view and download their bills and access energy-saving tips from their account, seeing personalized information when logged in.
Legal assurance. Liferay DXP’s strong authorization and user management capabilities guarantee GDPR compliance even in complicated situations, like a resident change.

Initial feedback post-launch has been positive—a promising sign for the future as the now cloud-hosted customer portal will be rolled out in 18 countries and multiple languages soon. Techem also plans to add energy-saving functions like AI-supported monitoring and consumption alarms, repair order management, and cost recording.

About DCCS

DCCS GmbH is a leading IT solutions partner that supports companies on their journey to becoming data-driven organizations. DCCS helps clients increase efficiency, reduce operating costs, and unlock new revenue streams by modernizing software, digitizing end-to-end processes, and using data and AI solutions. With its many years of expertise in the platform and portal sector, DCCS also offers customized solutions that not only strengthen competitiveness but also ensure long-term success.

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