sonnen

Technology

Cloud & DevOps

Software Development

Industry

E-commerce & Retail

Our client is a German business that specializes in enabling electricity storage and connecting them to virtual power plants (VPP).

The company assists its customers in becoming energy independent with clean and self-produced energy. Thanks to the sonnenBatterie–smart storage system designed by our client’s specialists, it’s now possible to save funds on using electricity every day. The series of intelligent products enables any surplus of energy to be stored, shared, or sold. Additionally, sonnen can connect the storage systems of its customers to form large “virtual batteries” that can support the grid. Moreover, customers can select the solution that best suits their needs from a wide range of possibilities. The company offers options for e-mobility, smart energy contracts, or emergency power supply.

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Challenge:Modernizing the payment matching application

Our cooperation started in 2019 when we built a professional QA team dedicated to one of the client’s products. Over time, the team has grown, and Codete’s employees have also engaged in other projects. While looking for additional specialists, one of the major criteria was to find those who could adapt quickly and support the client in delivering a key release. The latest project is being carried out by a team that includes a Codete developer.

The project’s main challenge is modernizing the existing payment matching application that enables it to pair invoices with the proper customers. The solution suggested by the developers also makes it possible to automate parts of the document-gathering process in the database.

The app has been previously set up, but refactoring was required because of the need for scalability. As the range of electricity suppliers is intensively growing, and nowadays, there are several hundreds of them on the German market, our client needs to adapt the previously used solutions to the actual trends and expectations of the users.

Cooperation with Codete lets our client expand the set of services and products offered to their customers, as well as simplify adding new energy providers to the already existing database.

Payment matching application development – automation of the process

To meet all the client’s requirements, Codete was asked to implement a few changes to the existing application. The key was to improve the automation process of as many invoices as possible. Today, the application handles two different types of documents – the payment plan and the annual statement.

Due to the fact that the currently used version of the app strictly refers to its primary version from the proof of concept phase, the code in use needs to be adapted to the changing needs. Of course, many bugs are also detected and removed in the refactoring process.

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Solution:Implement the changes based on AWS in the code

Our client was looking for experts who could improve the currently used app or create a new one that would be adjusted to the circumstances of the German energy market. The team consists of 5 people: a Business Analyst, a Topic Owner, three Developers (one from Codete), and one trainee. Because in Germany, most of the invoices are still sent to the customers by traditional post, in paper form, the team needed to set up an infrastructure that would transfer and process the files in the cloud.

The communication between the project’s participants has never caused any problems, but the lack of well-thought-out architecture made the development team discuss two possible ways of work:

– one of them is about modifying the already existing solutions so that they will fit the architecture,

– the other one is about taking a few steps back in order to make some changes on the basic level of the project.

These two alternatives are designed to help automate the processing of as many invoices as possible, but the final choice hasn’t been made yet.

All the processes are ongoing and have been divided into different steps. One of them, finalized in September, assumed implementation of the Direct Marketing type of contract to the database, and the next one concerns the DSO powerhouse. Each step lasts between 3 and 6 months, and some of them happen simultaneously.