Expert Test Automation and Platform Integration for Energy Services

Business challenge

Energy procurement plays a crucial role for industries, companies, and governments. To effectively cater to their customers, energy providers must continuously evolve to offer the best services and logistics in the face of global challenges. Our client, a trusted global distributor of energy supplies, started down the path of digital transformation to strengthen their value proposition in the market. They outlined a concept of an integrated platform for fuel and energy management to serve their B2B customers in land, marine, and aviation markets around the globe.

With proven software development expertise, Intellias was the right technology partner to implement our client’s product strategy. Using engineering best practices and approaches, we established a robust test automation framework to validate data migration from the legacy monolithic solution to modern microservices. As part of integrated energy platform development, we helped our client enhance quality assurance (QA), product integrity, and business processes to effectively extend the geography of their services.

Solution delivered

Next-level test automation

The QA automation project oversaw the creation of an automated testing framework to streamline our client’s existing QA approach. By analyzing the technology stack and software architecture, we discovered that running tests first on microservices and then on the UI would be more efficient than the client’s conventional method. Led by our seasoned automation QA engineer, this process smoothly transitioned from the discovery phase into the full-fledged delivery of automated tests across development teams. The in-sprint test automation we applied focused on bridging the gap between testing and development by incorporating both within the same sprint.

The testing framework we built relied on our competence in developing sophisticated ecosystems for energy companies. Given the complexity of our client’s software architecture, we focused on delivering optimized and cost-efficient automated test coverage. As our client wanted to migrate from a monolithic architecture to microservices, we helped them establish automation testing to check if their data migration went smoothly. For this, we trained their engineers to write Java-based auto tests using a purpose-built tool.

By introducing auto tests at the microservice level, we could detect issues at their early stages and promptly address the root cause of each. The new approach effectively streamlined the entire development process without interfering with existing testing frameworks. Our QA automation strategy provided a reliable quality gate to swiftly verify tens of microservices in the blink of an eye. Previously, it took two weeks to check if data was displayed correctly for about 200 customers using our client’s marketplace. With the new framework, this could be verified within 30 seconds by running a smart script created by our team.

Integrated platform development

After the successful delivery of a new automation framework, we started another ambitious project with our client to enable their energy reporting on the Oceania market. We helped them fine-tune business processes by establishing Agile best practices and setting up a productive software development lifecycle. The assumed scope of work included integrating a local reporting tool into our client’s holistic ecosystem of analytical products catering to energy businesses around the globe. Fuel services provided by land, air, and sea had to be consolidated and registered within one integrated platform that would provide meaningful insights to address specific B2B customer needs.

The existing tool used legacy technology and required upgrading as well as architectural redefinition to enable integration into a unified system for reporting on, controlling, and monitoring energy services. With our platform development expertise and our client’s product vision, we implemented the necessary functionality to live up to the client’s expectations in terms of the integrity and scalability of developed solutions. For example, one module we were working on converted energy units into local metric systems (megajoules and kilowatt-hours), providing a high level of adaptability to different regional markets.

Energy monitoring was another important feature we built based on data management and analytics to create extensive reports and customizable power consumption dashboards. Coupled with the conversion module, this allowed customers from any part of the world to receive localized data with actionable insights to inform their business decisions.

As part of integrated system development, we built a solution that consolidated consumption data and billing information via an intermediary data warehouse. The key focus was on streamlining invoice validation by optimizing complex data flows and introducing parameters for tracking energy use.

Business outcome

As our client was looking for engineering expertise in test automation, we provided just the right skill set and helped them establish an automation framework that streamlined their data migration to microservices. Our team employed automated scripts to deliver easily interpreted test results and quickly identify bottlenecks. We revamped our client’s test automation by eliminating unneeded overhead without overriding their existing approach yet bringing tangible enhancements:

• The redefined automation framework provided an unseen optimization by reducing the time for full test runs from two weeks to 30 seconds.
• New auto tests covered about 60 microservices used by over 10,000 of our client’s business customers around the world.
• Automated test suites allowed for three times faster data migrations between different platforms.
• The time spent on writing enterprise-wide auto tests decreased by 7x, optimizing the cost of QA services and engineering resources.

Apart from fine-tuning our client’s test automation workflow, we also adapted their B2B energy procurement platform for a new market. By building a unit conversion module, Intellias helped our client go global by extending the geography of their energy management solutions to Australia and beyond. Using our strong Agile expertise, we employed the Scrumban methodology, providing just the right mix of formal routines and flexibility for smooth product delivery:

• Traceability throughout the software development lifecycle and complete visibility into the entire process improved the communication flow across time zones.
• Accurate project planning and software delivery reduced the time to market for our client’s energy services from one year to a couple of months.
• Integrating local proprietary solutions into a unified platform for energy management, monitoring, and analytics allowed our client to globalize their product offering.