Client

Nexant Inc.

Services

End-to-end Demand Side Management for Utilities

Years Engaged

2010-2018

Objectives

Nexant’s CTO approached Catalyst wanting to identify how Nexant could help utility customers better-understand their energy use and be more efficient with their use. He wanted Catalyst to  help identify if there was a business case for a utility-customer facing application and what it might be.

Managing a team of Catalyst and Nexant resources, Brian Cronin became product owner, directly reporting to the Nexant CTO, and developed a design-thinking process to identify possible product and/or service opportunities.

Key Activities

Catalyst conducted competitive and comparative research and ethnographic research with 18 utility customers. The design team then ideated and developed product and service concepts, along with a business case and product strategy to be shared with Nexant’s Board of Directors.

Catalyst developed an MVP instance of the customer application, working with an off-shore developer to maximize product development, and subsequently built Facebook, Small business, and Trade-ally applications.

Outcomes

Nexant iEnergy® software platform is now powering more than 60 utilities, running more than 600 DSM customer programs in North America. The iEnergy platform enables utilities to operate end-to-end Demand Side Management (DSM) from customer engagement to-back office operations. The result is a comprehensive DSM platform that centralizes business processes, consolidates data management into a single system, and delivers improved visibility and results for utilities.

This was the first program where Catalyst filled the role of Product Owner and incubated the application through multiple pivots and stage gates.