Acardia Announces Major New Oracle Install at Co-op Energy

BRACKNELL, U.K. - March 27, 2014 - PRLog -- Acardia Limited (http://www.acardia.co.uk/), an Oracle Gold Partner, has announced the provision of an important new business system to Co-operative Energy. Comprising integrated hardware, software applications, middleware and services, the new system facilitates the automation of core business functions for Co-op Energy including CRM, metering and billing for up to two million customers and four million energy supplies.

Working in partnership with Oracle, Acardia won the contract to supply the new solution in an open bid. “We were impressed by Acardia and Oracle’s understanding of both our business model and business requirement,” said Sheridan Hindle, Head of IT, Co-op Energy. “In addition, to meeting all technical expedients, they were able to meet the pricing and delivery constraints that were also important criteria for our decision making.”

Dave Shearer, CEO at Acardia, said “We are delighted to have been awarded this prestigious contract and to be associated with this important new service from Co-op Energy. Our long term experience with Oracle hardware and software (http://www.acardia.co.uk/oracle.html), together with our proven integration skills and ability to get answers have helped Acardia to add value to this solution.”

The new system provides a fully scalable approach to enable Co-op Energy to meet the demands of a rapidly increasing customer base. It includes Oracle Sun servers, a Storagetek storage solution utilising SSDs (solid state disks) and traditional HDDs for robust data protection, together with all associated hardware, middleware, Oracle Database and Oracle Utility application.

“To ensure full transparency, we want our IT solution to allow customers as much interaction and control over their energy account as possible. As people seek a viable alternative to traditional energy suppliers, accelerating interest in our services means we are signing up thousands of new business and domestic customers each month. We needed to act promptly to ensure that we could continue to deliver the high levels of customer service with which we are already associated,” continued Sheridan Hindle.

Formed in 2010 with the aim of becoming Britain’s most trusted energy provider, Co-op Energy is wholly owned by The Midcounties Co-operative (http://www.midcounties.coop/) - a consumer co-operative society owned by its members. The service started testing in 2011 and by January 2013, Co-op Energy had signed its 100,000th customer to start mounting a serious challenge to the big 6 energy providers which dominate the UK landscape.

At launch, the company had implemented a solution to manage up to 30,000 customer accounts, but with forecasts for growth being comprehensively exceeded, a new CRM and customer billing system was required. In addition, the increase in customer numbers had brought with it the requirement for Co-op Energy to introduce regulatory processes as distinct thresholds were reached. For more information please visit http://www.acardia.co.uk/

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About Acardia

Acardia was founded to serve the UNIX requirements of organisations in the UK, Ireland and Europe and has built its reputation on the technical services offered to its customers. Acardia customers include IT professionals in all sized businesses, as well as those developing software for use in-house or as commercial products. Acardia customers are united by their selection of UNIX operating systems to meet the security and scalability requirements of today's 24x7 business.

Press Contact:
Sheridan Hindle, Head of IT, Co-op Energy,
E: Sheridan.Hindle(at)cit(dot)coop

Holly Jones, Citypress
E: holly.jones(at)citypress(dot)co.uk
Tel: 0161 235 0300

David Shearer, Acardia
E: dave.shearer(at)acardia(dot)co.uk
Tel: 0845 230 1055

Rory Flashman, Spa Communications
E: rory(at)spacomms(dot)co.uk
Tel: 01892 511413