E-homes service provider Econic has deployed a low-code digital field services and business operations platform to speed up residential energy transition from natural gas to electric.

Dutch company Econic’s new Eos platform was created in four months utilising the Siemens Mendix low-code application development system. The platform digitalises all workflows in the value chain from quote to cash. According to Siemens, the new platform is now poised to become the de facto operating system for energy transition in the housing market.

The new platform is designed to significantly accelerate residential energy transition away from carbon-based fuels, including gas, and support transition to more sustainable and politically acceptable energy supplies.

With the Eos platform, housing management staff, home owners and contractors can manage all orders, deliveries, assets, supplies, quotations, agreements and invoices leading to process efficiencies, transparency, and massive acceleration of the residential housing sector’s energy transition.

Econic is a Dutch company which operates in the Netherlands and Germany helping homeowners, contractors, and housing associations accelerate the transition to fully electric e-homes so the carbon footprint of consumers can be dramatically reduced.

To reach those numbers, Econic needed to digitalise the whole value chain and ecosystem of field services. “We wanted to go ten times faster without compromising on scalability or customer experience,” said Mike Out, head of digital strategy and customer experience, at Econic. “We knew the traditional way of developing a platform wasn’t an option. We were already familiar with low-code. However, we have very specific needs as we have a unique proposition offering the entire scope from advice to realisation for energy transition. After reading Forrester and Gartner reports  on low-code vendors and hearing about various successful use cases, our team decided to work with the Mendix enterprise low-code platform.” 

Mendix partner CLEVR advised the business team at Econic on how to transform a value chain and ecosystem that has been traditionally non-digital. To cater to Econic’s needs, CLEVR designed Eos, a unified system with overview, insight and workflows for all business critical processes ranging from scheduling a work order, digital sign-off, online scheduling, quotation tooling, supply management and invoicing. The platform also features five-tailor made portals for different stakeholders like home owners, project managers, internal staff and contractors. “The Mendix platform enables us to build unique solutions and makes an ERP system redundant. It basically provides us with a workflow machine with which we can digitalise 90% of our simple processes so we have more time to think about new, smart solutions to further enhance the customer experience,” said Out. 

Econic is now able to speed up the energy transition significantly by doing twice as many e-home installations per day, due to smarter resource management, lower costs and offering improved value to partners and clients. Customer service agents can handle double the amount of tickets. “Thanks to the flexibility and customisability of low-code, we can build a more efficient operation and a pixel perfect experience for our customers and our field service engineers that can be continuously optimised,” Out stated.

Using the Mendix application allows Econic to deliver assignments completely digitally. Eos provides functions like digital video inspection and smart forms which makes its processes transparent, data-driven, scalable and ultimately leads to increased customer satisfaction. The latest addition to Eos is a modular e-home configurator in which consumers can put together and customise their own e-home.

“The fact that Econic’s internal stakeholders quickly changed their thinking from ‘its an IT project’ to ‘we’re a digital company’ illustrates a key benefit of using the Mendix platform to transform and modernise the enterprise,” said Hans de Visser, vice president of product management at Mendix. “We’re very proud to contribute to Econic’s goal to lead the energy transition in the housing market and look forward to seeing what other innovative features their development team will add to the platform in the future.” 

“We can be an example for the industry by doing things differently and going faster and further than anyone else,” stated Joris Jonker, CEO of Econic. “Energy and installation companies try to offer experiences like ours but are struggling as it’s very complicated to unite all these elements in one platform. “With Eos, we can share the blueprints of our success and offer the platform to our partners and potentially even to our competitors. For now, we’re focused on our ambitious roadmap that includes making certain modules available on the Mendix Marketplace for others to leverage.”