Electricity and gas suppliers in Germany are under enormous pressure to change. Rising energy prices, increasing market volatility, and growing regulatory requirements are creating major challenges for energy suppliers.
Customer loyalty is declining, price competition is intensifying, and at the same time, growing transparency requirements on the part of regulators demand increasingly detailed reporting of revenues and expenses. Anyone who wants to manage their business profitably under these conditions needs sales planning and controlling that creates transparency, provides a differentiated view of costs and margins, and enables flexible, data-based decision-making.
Complex data landscape: Why many energy suppliers are hesitant
To achieve this, data from a wide variety of systems, such as billing and CRM systems, sales portals, and purchasing systems, must be consolidated, harmonized, and processed using individual keys and calculation logic.
It is particularly challenging to map a uniform contribution margin model that takes into account both standard rates for private customers and complex special contracts for business customers.
Despite the obvious benefits, smaller and medium-sized energy suppliers in particular are often hesitant to implement integrated sales planning and control based on uniform contribution margin accounting. The reason for this is usually the high level of manual effort involved. In many cases, there is no consistently reliable database on which solid planning models can be easily based. Different billing logics, for example for decentralized producers, CHP trading, or spot and tranche customers, make standardization even more difficult. Billing mistakes, unclear simulation results, or incomplete price and quantity data at the individual customer level also mean that the effort required for a reliable analysis can quickly get out of hand.
Before planning starts, the foundation should be solid
A modern planning solution should start right here. The first and most important step is a clean, complete, and reliable database for the entire customer base. Without this foundation, it's impossible to make realistic plans.
Only then can flexible planning layouts and functions be provided in the second step, delivering comprehensible and meaningful results – whether for your own sales activities such as campaigns, new products, and price adjustments, or for external factors such as volatile procurement prices, rising cancellation rates, and statutory levies.
This requires a system that not only consolidates data, but also automatically validates it, checks it for plausibility, and corrects it where necessary. This is the only way to create an up-to-date, consistent picture of the customer portfolio that can be used as a basis for further planning. And this should not be a One-time effort, but a regular, automated process. After all, the goal is not just to draw up a plan once a year, but to generate reliable forecasts on a rolling monthly basis and update business plans for the following years several times a year.
How does this work in practice?
One company that has already successfully gone this route is badenova Energie GmbH. For over a decade, an expert from NextLytics has been supporting the further development of their SAP-based sales planning. We spoke with Christian Kranz, a long-standing point of contact in sales controlling at badenova, about the experience they have gained, the current challenges, and the topics that will be in focus in the coming years.
- Christian, looking back over the last few years, how has sales planning changed at badenova? What new challenges have emerged, and what developments in your planning solution were particularly important for you in responding to these changes?
Answer: The energy crisis in particular has fundamentally changed the demands on our sales planning over the last three to four years. Traditional planning cycles, which were only carried out twice a year and involved relatively complex processes, are no longer able to cope with today's market volatility. Today, much more agile and flexible planning is required.
One of the biggest challenges is mastering the increasing complexity of the energy market while making our planning processes faster and more efficient. A higher degree of automation and expanded scenario planning options have played a key role in this. These enhancements enable us to run through scenarios much faster, adjust forecasts dynamically, and analyze deviations in real time.
- Looking ahead, what challenges do you see for sales planning at badenova in the coming years or for energy suppliers in general? The product portfolio is becoming more complex, new market models are coming into play with the rollout of smart meters, and electric mobility and new business models are emerging. Which of these do you think will be particularly relevant for planning?
Answer: Looking ahead, it is clear that the challenges for sales planning will not become any less in the coming years. Increasing complexity due to technological developments and regulatory changes is presenting energy suppliers with completely new requirements. The rollout of smart meters, for example, not only brings transparency, but also generates huge amounts of data that must be processed and interpreted in a meaningful way in order to create a viable basis for planning.
One particularly exciting aspect is the dynamic pricing that smart meters make possible in the first place. This requires a completely new approach to planning and forecasting, as pricing and customer behavior are becoming significantly more volatile. Traditional models quickly reach their limits here – agile, data-driven approaches are gaining in importance.
In addition, the boundaries between individual sectors are becoming increasingly blurred. The traditional way of thinking in separate business areas – such as electricity, gas, and heating – will disappear. Natural gas will become less important in the future, while new areas such as hydrogen and energy-related services will gain in significance. This opens up new opportunities, particularly in sales, for example by combining electricity products with energy services to create attractive bundle offers.
All this means that sales planning in the future must be not only more integrated, but also significantly more flexible and innovation-driven. It is no longer enough to optimize existing processes – in many areas, we must also redefine planning logic in order to keep pace with the dynamics of the market.
- Technically speaking, the world isn't exactly getting any simpler: data landscapes are becoming increasingly heterogeneous, and applications are now partly in the cloud and partly still on-premise. At badenova, you are also part of the Thüga Billing Platform (TAP) – that's a lot of dynamics coming together. At the same time, you made a conscious choice to go with a planning architecture based on your BW/4HANA with BPC Embedded. From today's perspective – and looking ahead – where do you see the biggest challenges on the IT side?
Answer: Technically speaking, the world is indeed becoming increasingly complex, and the growing heterogeneity of data landscapes is posing major challenges for companies. The decision to go with a planning architecture based on BW/4HANA with BPC Embedded was a conscious and strategic one, aimed at creating a solid foundation for future developments. However, it is clear that the cloud products currently offered by SAP do not yet have the same features as the on-premise BPC Embedded, which means that a switch is not yet possible for us.
With regard to the heterogeneity of the IT landscape, one of the biggest challenges is ensuring integration and interoperability between the various systems. Applications that are operated partly in the cloud and partly on-premise require seamless communication and data consistency. In addition, security aspects and compliance requirements must be continuously monitored and adapted.
In general, we are closely monitoring developments in cloud products to identify the right time for us to make the switch.
- In your opinion, is the use of AI the next logical step in the further development of your planning at badenova? What specifically would you hope to gain from it?
Answer: I am convinced that AI is the key to sustainable planning – especially when you consider the increasing complexity of our work, which we have already touched on in the previous topics. At the moment, it is still a little abstract to imagine how AI can be used in practice because development is progressing so rapidly.
If I hope for specific benefits, then above all faster and more accurate forecasts. In a dynamic market environment, reliable planning figures are crucial, and this is where AI could bring us enormous time and efficiency gains. Another important point for me would be support in entering planning assumptions. Artificial intelligence could automatically analyze correlations and derive relevant recommendations for action in order to make well-founded decisions more quickly.
I also find the potential access to planning via natural language particularly exciting. Instead of scrolling through countless Excel spreadsheets or using complex filter functions, it could be possible in the future to simply ask a question and get a precise answer immediately. This would not only make planning much easier for us users, but also greatly increase the overall speed of the process.
- Your planning solution was developed over many years of collaboration and has been continuously refined. What was particularly important to you in this collaboration, and what contribution do you think an external IT service provider such as NextLytics AG can make to ensure that a planning solution like this becomes a functioning tool in day-to-day business?
Answer: For me, partnership-based collaboration on an eye-to-eye level is the key element of successful development. Over many years, it has become clear how valuable it is when an IT service provider not only has in-depth technical expertise, but also understands our specific requirements and actively contributes ideas.
An ideal partner not only has in-depth knowledge of the energy sector, but also brings ideas and best practices from other industries. This broadens our horizons and promotes innovative solutions that directly benefit us.
Flexibility also plays a crucial role. In a dynamic environment like ours, new requirements or challenges often arise at short notice. An external service provider who responds quickly, acts flexibly, and proactively contributes creative ideas is therefore a real asset.
For me, this combination of technical expertise, industry knowledge, openness, and flexibility forms the basis for a collaboration that not only works but also creates real added value. This is exactly the case with our planning solution.
Sales Planning for energy providers: Our Conclusion
For energy providers, sales planning is about more than revenue targets – it ensures transparency in costs and margins, supports agile decisions, and strengthens resilience in volatile markets.
Modern solutions consolidate complex data, enable flexible forecasts and adapt to new challenges like smart meters and e-mobility.
An experienced IT consulting partner, such as NextLytics AG, helps establish a solid data foundation, implement integrated planning and bring in best practices.
This turns sales planning into a strategic tool for efficiency, innovation and competitiveness.
Do you have questions on this or another topic? Simply get in touch with us - we look forward to exchanging ideas with you!