B2B Trading Platform for Natural Gas and Electricity

Web-based in-house platform of an energy trading company: the sales team uses it to procure natural gas and electricity and sell them to business customers – connected to exchange data, SAP and a self-service portal for end customers.

Period: 2014 – 2018, 2024 – 2025 · Client: energy trading company · Industry: energy

Challenge

Sales staff procure natural gas and electricity and sell them to business customers. The platform brings these processes together in one application – from current exchange data to the integration with SAP. End customers access their data via a connected self-service portal. What matters to the sales team: current prices, clear processes and no duplicate data entry.

The technical challenges behind it:

• Current exchange data: Prices for natural gas and electricity change constantly. Procurement and sales must be based on current exchange data.
• Integration with SAP: The platform exchanges data with the company's SAP system so that sales and accounting work with the same information.
• Clear, changeable processes: The sales processes are modeled as BPMN processes and run in a process engine. This keeps them traceable and adaptable.
• Self-service for end customers: The self-service portal accesses the platform's data. The interface must be reliable and secured against unauthorized access.
• Long-lived application: The platform has been in use for more than ten years. Frontend, build and tests are modernized without disrupting ongoing sales.

Role and Implementation

• IT Project Manager, Software Architect, Backend Developer
  Phase 1: 2014 – 2018 · Takeover of the existing system
  • Technical project management
  • Consulting on and implementation of new processes
  • Migration and modernization of the frontend (Apache Wicket)
  • Integration of the process engine (Camunda BPMN)
  • Connection of the self-service portal for end customers (REST)
  • Operation on Red Hat JBoss
• Software Architect, Backend Developer, Business Analyst, Test Automation Engineer
  Phase 2: 2024 – 2025 · Modernization
  • Requirements engineering and implementation of new features
  • Optimization of the build and test pipeline
  • In-project training

Technologies

• Java EE 7 / 8
• Red Hat JBoss
• Apache Wicket 6.x – 9.x
• Camunda
• BPMN
• REST
• AMQP
• RabbitMQ
• SAP
• enmacc