Thanks to the Liferay platform, ENGIE now has a highly personalized and dynamic website with a wide range of features, capable of facilitating B2B and B2C relationships and aimed at meeting the specific needs of their broad customer base.
ENGIE Re-Energizes Their Website, Putting the User Experience at the Forefront
1M
customers
650,000
lighting points
60
offices
Outline
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Key Takeaways
- Site flexibility and adaptability
- Simplification of back-end content creation
- Faster time-to-market
- Reduction of manual errors
- Increased usability and high performance
Background
As a global champion of low-carbon energy, ENGIE’s vision is to speed up the transition to a carbon-neutral economy through efficient and environmentally friendly energy solutions. The goal is to achieve carbon neutrality by 2045.
With 3,200 employees and 60 offices throughout Italy, ENGIE covers the entire energy chain, ranging from renewable energy production, risk management, and energy sales in wholesale markets to the development and management of low-carbon distributed energy infrastructure.
With a large portfolio of 650,000 lighting points for public lighting, 2,600 condominiums, more than 2,000 schools, 80 hospitals, 30 universities, museums, and theaters, and more than 20 wind and solar farms, ENGIE has a total of 1 million customers across 350 municipalities and 200,000 home service customers.
With 3,200 employees and 60 offices throughout Italy, ENGIE covers the entire energy chain, ranging from renewable energy production, risk management, and energy sales in wholesale markets to the development and management of low-carbon distributed energy infrastructure.
With a large portfolio of 650,000 lighting points for public lighting, 2,600 condominiums, more than 2,000 schools, 80 hospitals, 30 universities, museums, and theaters, and more than 20 wind and solar farms, ENGIE has a total of 1 million customers across 350 municipalities and 200,000 home service customers.
Challenges
Given the scale of their operations and the diversity of the customer base, ENGIE required a flexible and highly customized portal. This portal needed to not only consistently represent ENGIE’s brand, providing a unified and recognizable digital presence for different kinds of customers, but also offer category-specific services and information. Additionally, ENGIE wanted the portal to interact with internal systems, retrieving updated information from them.
Implementation
To achieve these goals, ENGIE chose Liferay, a leading Digital Experience Platform offering cutting-edge software solutions that stand out because of Liferay’s open-source heritage and flexible platform. Liferay helps companies create web portals, intranets, websites, and business applications. Liferay was instrumental in ENGIE’s transformation journey, providing a complete system integration that went beyond the traditional showcase site to become a sophisticated website critical to the business ecosystem.
ENGIE entrusted application design and development to Liferay Partner Ariadne, a company specializing in IT consultancy services, tailor-made software development, and information management solutions. Since the initial creation of the platform, ENGIE and Ariadne have continued collaborating on the evolution of the website.
The website was designed to present ENGIE as an energy services operator capable of satisfying a wide array of customer needs, ranging from the residential sector to industrial and public sectors. The result is a site that adapts quickly to changing market needs and fulfills three functions: as an information source for customers, as a showcase of ENGIE’s offerings, and as a commercial platform.
The website has a series of connected sites, each aimed at a specific audience and differentiating between B2C, B2B, and B2G. The main page, ENGIE.it, serves as an access point and hosts key information. One site is for residential customers, another for business needs, and a third for public entities. While the B2B and B2G sites are primarily informational, the website as a whole has a commercial component with a dedicated customer space, currently intended for B2C customers as the majority of users.
These platforms have also been integrated with ENGIE’s internal systems, ensuring specific tools and services meet the needs of each customer category. For example, the solution integrates with a bill calculator for B2C customers as well as updated information for B2G customers on ENGIE’s geographical activity.
For portal implementation, ENGIE evaluated other open-source options, but they proved not cost-effective in terms of security for ticket management and data protection, vulnerability resolution, and compatibility.
Integration
Again, because of ENGIE’s complex and multifaceted ecosystem, they needed an integrated technological approach that would effectively manage key information across different sites, requiring the integration of numerous internal business systems, including CRM and several other legacy systems already in use. The data gleaned from the CRM has made it possible to provide more efficient and personalized service to customers on the B2C site, allowing them to check account information, view bills, upload self-readings, and manage their utilities. Additional integrations have allowed ENGIE to maintain updated product information, including details regarding costs, materials, and transportation services.
One example of this integration is the “bill simulator,” an application that enables users to estimate energy costs based on consumption and requirements. The bill simulator uses information gathered through an intuitive wizard, which collects data directly from users and makes precise calculations in order to give an accurate estimate of energy expenditures by accessing data from ENGIE systems that manage energy costs.
ENGIE entrusted application design and development to Liferay Partner Ariadne, a company specializing in IT consultancy services, tailor-made software development, and information management solutions. Since the initial creation of the platform, ENGIE and Ariadne have continued collaborating on the evolution of the website.
The website was designed to present ENGIE as an energy services operator capable of satisfying a wide array of customer needs, ranging from the residential sector to industrial and public sectors. The result is a site that adapts quickly to changing market needs and fulfills three functions: as an information source for customers, as a showcase of ENGIE’s offerings, and as a commercial platform.
The website has a series of connected sites, each aimed at a specific audience and differentiating between B2C, B2B, and B2G. The main page, ENGIE.it, serves as an access point and hosts key information. One site is for residential customers, another for business needs, and a third for public entities. While the B2B and B2G sites are primarily informational, the website as a whole has a commercial component with a dedicated customer space, currently intended for B2C customers as the majority of users.
These platforms have also been integrated with ENGIE’s internal systems, ensuring specific tools and services meet the needs of each customer category. For example, the solution integrates with a bill calculator for B2C customers as well as updated information for B2G customers on ENGIE’s geographical activity.
For portal implementation, ENGIE evaluated other open-source options, but they proved not cost-effective in terms of security for ticket management and data protection, vulnerability resolution, and compatibility.
Integration
Again, because of ENGIE’s complex and multifaceted ecosystem, they needed an integrated technological approach that would effectively manage key information across different sites, requiring the integration of numerous internal business systems, including CRM and several other legacy systems already in use. The data gleaned from the CRM has made it possible to provide more efficient and personalized service to customers on the B2C site, allowing them to check account information, view bills, upload self-readings, and manage their utilities. Additional integrations have allowed ENGIE to maintain updated product information, including details regarding costs, materials, and transportation services.
One example of this integration is the “bill simulator,” an application that enables users to estimate energy costs based on consumption and requirements. The bill simulator uses information gathered through an intuitive wizard, which collects data directly from users and makes precise calculations in order to give an accurate estimate of energy expenditures by accessing data from ENGIE systems that manage energy costs.
Results
Results
ENGIE’s revitalized website has generated significant benefits for both the company and their users. The new platform is flexible and easy to update, ensuring internal teams can keep up with market developments.
Because of the integration with internal systems, the risk of manual errors has been reduced and time-to-market has been reduced as well, speeding up the deployment of competitive solutions. In addition, the new portal has improved system stability and performance over the old platform, minimizing downtime and giving users continuous and reliable service. On the back end, the platform has been simplified so that communications and marketing teams can manage content independently.
Liferay’s flexibility has meant that ENGIE was able to extend the platform to meet specific needs for functionality or vertical applications, enhancing the versatility of the solution overall. And, with the introduction of headless APIs, ENGIE was able to decouple the front end from the back end, facilitating more dynamic and proactive management of services for users, achieving impressive levels of usability and performance, and improving SEO and Google Core Web Vitals.
All these improvements have increased ENGIE’s competitive advantage and quality of service while ensuring high standards of stability, performance, and operational efficiency.
Because of the integration with internal systems, the risk of manual errors has been reduced and time-to-market has been reduced as well, speeding up the deployment of competitive solutions. In addition, the new portal has improved system stability and performance over the old platform, minimizing downtime and giving users continuous and reliable service. On the back end, the platform has been simplified so that communications and marketing teams can manage content independently.
Liferay’s flexibility has meant that ENGIE was able to extend the platform to meet specific needs for functionality or vertical applications, enhancing the versatility of the solution overall. And, with the introduction of headless APIs, ENGIE was able to decouple the front end from the back end, facilitating more dynamic and proactive management of services for users, achieving impressive levels of usability and performance, and improving SEO and Google Core Web Vitals.
All these improvements have increased ENGIE’s competitive advantage and quality of service while ensuring high standards of stability, performance, and operational efficiency.
Future Projects
Future Projects
Happy with the outcome of their solution, ENGIE is now focusing efforts on maximizing B2C web traffic, which accounts for 90% of total traffic. In continuing partnership with Ariadne, ENGIE is also improving system performance for B2B and B2G customers.
These updates will provide ENGIE with even more opportunities to serve their different customers since the B2C retail division is just one part of their landscape, which includes the renewable energy sector, energy solutions for companies and public entities, and the management of energy networks abroad.
ENGIE’s updates reflect a sustained commitment to their customers, providing everyone with the resources and information needed.
These updates will provide ENGIE with even more opportunities to serve their different customers since the B2C retail division is just one part of their landscape, which includes the renewable energy sector, energy solutions for companies and public entities, and the management of energy networks abroad.
ENGIE’s updates reflect a sustained commitment to their customers, providing everyone with the resources and information needed.