enercity automates the sales process for district heating connections in just a few weeks

For one of Germany’s largest energy suppliers, which provides electricity, heating, gas and water to almost a million people, the growing interest in sustainable heating has exposed a digital gap. There was no central overview of the district heating network, and the rapidly increasing number of customer enquiries was becoming an ever-greater challenge.

Low-code – and ultimately Mendix – provided the solution. What began as a project to improve quotation processes evolved into a comprehensive digital infrastructure that connects customers, partners, network operators and internal teams. The platform is based on a shared, map-based view of the network and brings together all relevant data and processes in a single central interface that automatically accesses a wide variety of back-end systems. This provides enercity with complete process reliability and maximum scalability in response to the rising demand for district heating connections.

District heating is, by its very nature, localised. The pipes run beneath the streets. Capacity depends on the network topology. Availability to customers is determined by proximity. The enercity team had a clear objective for the development of their software: a cross-regional, map-based view of the entire district heating network. Before integrating Mendix, this centralised data view did not exist. The sales teams manually collated information from emails, spreadsheets and various systems, which led to long processing times and hampered effective planning.

What began as a measure to improve sales efficiency quickly developed into something far greater: a shared digital map designed to serve as the backbone for district heating sales, network expansion planning and cross-team collaboration. Mendix’s modular design, which allows it to grow flexibly in line with requirements, also played a key technological role in creating efficient solutions.

In 2024, enercity, in collaboration with the d.u.h.Group, began automating its processes using low-code technology. Our experience from projects with municipal utilities and energy suppliers, combined with our long-standing expertise in IT and process consultancy and Mendix implementation – all provided from a single source – helped to transform this vision into a scalable, future-proof platform.

Demand for district heating connections had skyrocketed within just a few years, and Mendix became the central development and operations platform for applications designed to make enercity’s processes more transparent and efficient – all whilst remaining compatible with the existing system landscape and data models. This meant, for example, that there was no need for time-consuming and error-prone data migrations.

With Mendix and the bespoke development of applications, automation measures could be implemented with a razor-sharp focus on the problem at hand, meaning that interactions with other systems did not have to be laboriously taken into account. This was crucial in ensuring that solutions could be implemented quickly and that no lengthy planning phases were required. “The demand for district heating connections has risen so sharply that even a significant expansion of the enercity district heating sales team would not be a sustainable solution without better processes and tools.” – Marc Scheil, Project Manager, d.u.h.Group

As the district heating platform was further developed, enercity began to apply the same low-code approach to other business areas within enercity AG and enercity Netz GmbH. “In view of growing volumes and stricter regulatory requirements, we needed processes that were just as transparent and flexible for our partners as they were for our internal teams.” – Leon March, Business Account Manager at enercity. The result was a series of interconnected applications which, whilst differing in purpose, are all built on the same digital foundation and share data efficiently with one another.

With Mendix as an integral part of its IT strategy, enercity is focusing on next-generation features that go beyond back-office applications. “We equip our field teams with tablets for on-site customer meetings. This enables them to inspect basement areas, take photos, annotate details, access data remotely and enter information directly into the system.” – Leon March, Business Account Manager at enercity

Photographs, annotations and AI-driven insights will further improve planning and decision-making. AI will help to uncover patterns in complex data sets, highlight priorities and make it easier to access information.