Launch Of Shell's Green Power Business

Co-operation between Shell and intelligence for business

"Without intelligence for business we would not have been able to operate the Green power business in time. They ensured we got the business and IT systems aligned and ready in time." Ewald Breunesse, Senior Business Manager Shell Consumer

Today the utilities market is changing quickly driven by European community regulations which will liberalise all utilities services in the European community by 2007. Shell saw providing utility products as a perfect new challenge, complementary to and fitting with the strategy of Shell to be a total energy service provider to businesses and consumers. In early 2001, they began work to define the business plan and architecture to exploit the opportunity successfully. The decision was to launch a green energy business.

The challenge was to create a competent team to build the organisation, the business processes and supporting IT, all in less than a year. Shell approached intelligence for business to develop the business processes and manage the IT development, working with a small development firm. Shell, intelligence for business and the system builder created a very effective and efficient team which was able to get all the work done in record time.

The main difficulties faced in realising the launch in time were around rules and legislation as well as embedding and connecting the new business to the internal Shell organisation and IT systems. Definitions of the switch process between suppliers and grid-owners was ready in draft just one month before launch, still to be approved by the governmental bodies and formal contracts between grid-owners and suppliers are still to be finalised, depending on the contractual model to be agreed with customers. Internal IT development did not see this new business as main stream projects and therefore it took a lot of time and effort to agree their participation.

With open communication and a lot of enthusiasm the team worked hard to bring the initial requirements in place and complemented this by managing and creating the internal and external interface processes with Shell legacy systems, such as SAP, Shell Information Technology International (SITI), suppliers and other third parties, including grid-owners.

The core team of Shell and Intelligence for business started with two people (one of each) and during the development of the program this was extended to six people (four Shell and two i4b). alongside currently more than 30 people were involved in setting-up the green power operation (including the customer service centre, SAP, SITI, SNV and the core Shell consumer team)

intelligence for business played a key role in creating this success with Shell by:

Creating the business processes and business requirements
Building the bridge between business and IT
Selecting an IT development partner
Managing all IT developments
Embedding the IT developments within the Shell organisation
Ensuring the risks involved were understood and managed
Challenging the project team to deliver and be flexible at the same time.

All efforts were directed to the creation of a lean and mean organisation to support the new green power business in the Netherlands for the coming years.

As Ewald Breunesse stated: "With such a team of excellent professionals you can really achieve your business ambitions in a challenging time frame."