Case study
Bionic required a CRM and operational platform capable of supporting the day-to-day processes of a modern UK business energy brokerage. Unlike a traditional sales CRM, an energy brokerage has to manage substantially more than leads and opportunities.
Sales teams need visibility of consumption, electricity and gas meters, suppliers, contract end dates, renewal windows, pricing, Letters of Authority, Change of Tenancy cases, quotations, contracts, commissions and supplier relationships. Management teams need a centralised view of performance across representatives, sub-brokers, suppliers, accounts and revenue.
Zorix Systems designed and implemented a 360-degree business energy CRM ecosystem centred on Salesforce, supported by Zoho and multiple internal and external API integrations, connecting lead generation through to renewal in a single operational environment.
At a glance
The challenge
A single business energy opportunity can involve multiple decision-makers, several electricity meters, several gas meters, different suppliers, different contract end dates and different annual consumption levels. Traditional CRMs are rarely designed around those requirements.
A normal CRM understands contact, company, opportunity, deal value and sales stage. An energy broker also has to understand the following, at meter level, for every customer.
Objectives
Every customer, company, site, meter, quotation and energy contract needed to be connected, so that opening an account immediately answered who the customer is, where they operate, how many meters they have, who supplies them, what they consume, when contracts end and what documentation is outstanding.
Salesforce formed the core CRM environment, but the architecture was designed around the processes brokers actually follow rather than standard CRM stages.
Lead management
Business energy leads arrive from PPC, SEO, website enquiries, comparison forms, telephone and email campaigns, referral partners, sub-brokers, existing customer renewals, purchased data and direct sales activity. The CRM records the original source of every opportunity so management can see where customers come from and how they progress.
Lead volumes at this scale cannot be allocated by hand, so assignment workflows distribute opportunities automatically while keeping clear ownership in the CRM.
Meter data
Electricity supplies are held as MPAN records carrying supplier, contract end date, EAC, meter type, site address, supply status, quote status and contract status. Gas supplies are held as MPRN records with supplier, AQ, contract end date, supply address and renewal date. Where meter-data integrations were available, values could be retrieved or verified through API services rather than maintained in spreadsheets.
A commercial organisation may have several locations, several electricity meters, several gas meters, different suppliers, different end dates and different consumption levels. The data model supports a parent account with sites beneath it and meters beneath each site, so each meter keeps its own contract and supplier information while large multi-site opportunities stay inside one account structure.
Pricing and integration
Business energy pricing depends on supplier, fuel, contract duration, consumption, meter profile, location, start date, credit status, market conditions and commission structure. Zorix Systems built the integration architecture required to connect supplier and pricing systems to the CRM, so that where APIs were available, pricing arrived inside the quotation workflow instead of a separate portal.
API connectivity was treated as a foundational layer rather than an add-on, which turned Salesforce from a traditional CRM into a business energy operations platform.
Contract end dates
Contract end date is the most commercially important field in a brokerage: a customer who cannot buy today becomes an opportunity in six months. It was treated as an operational field driving automation rather than reference information.
Renewal opportunities are generated automatically from contract end dates and pre-populated with account, customer, meter, current supplier, current contract, end date, sales owner and renewal stage, so representatives can contact customers proactively instead of relying on spreadsheets or calendar reminders.
LOA and COT
Letters of Authority move through explicit statuses — not requested, requested, sent, customer reviewing, signed, received, rejected, expired — with documents attached directly to the customer or opportunity, so teams can see whether authority exists before starting supplier processes.
Change of Tenancy cases carry business name, previous and new occupant, site address, move-in date, supplier, MPAN, MPRN, supporting documents, submission date and supplier response, which keeps them out of sales notes and email chains.
Suppliers, sub-brokers and finance
Zoho and marketing automation
Salesforce remained the core CRM while Zoho supported email marketing, customer communication, sales outreach, campaign management and lead nurturing. Customer and lead information is synchronised or transferred between the systems according to workflow requirements.
Campaigns are triggered by position in the lifecycle: new lead nurturing, LOA reminder sequences, quote follow-ups, renewal communication and existing-customer campaigns for additional business services. Marketing activity is written back against the relevant CRM records.
Approach
The result
The final platform manages the full lifecycle of a business energy customer: sales, customer information, energy meters, supplier pricing, contracts, documentation, finance and renewals in one connected environment.
Customer, meter, supplier, contract and sales data is centralised; sales teams have a clearer pipeline; API integrations reduce friction between qualification and quotation; contract-end-date tracking surfaces future opportunities automatically; supplier and sub-broker relationships are managed systematically; automation removes repetitive administration; and management dashboards report on sales, renewals, suppliers, sub-brokers and finance.
Role-based permissions across sales, sales management, administration, finance, operations, marketing, sub-broker management and senior management keep the system usable while controlling access to commission and organisation-wide data.
Modules
Related work: energy broker CRM development and energy and utilities software.
Questions
A standard CRM models contact, company, opportunity and stage. An energy broker also has to model MPANs, MPRNs, EAC and AQ, current suppliers, contract end dates, LOAs, COT cases, supplier pricing and commission. Without those objects the sales process falls back onto spreadsheets and supplier portals.
Salesforce is the core CRM and customer data layer, extended with custom objects and workflows for the energy model, and connected to Zoho and external pricing, supplier and meter-data services through a custom API layer.
A parent account holds sites, and each site holds its own electricity and gas meters. Each meter carries its own supplier, consumption and contract end date, so a customer with different suppliers and end dates across locations stays within one account structure.
Three to six months, delivered in phases from discovery and process mapping through CRM architecture, sales workflow, API integration, marketing integration, testing and progressive deployment.
Yes. The energy-specific data model, automation and integration layer are the substance of the work. They can be implemented on an existing Salesforce or Zoho estate, or built as a fully custom broker portal.
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Read the case studyIf your brokerage still runs leads, meter data, supplier pricing, LOAs, contracts and renewals across spreadsheets and disconnected systems, tell us the shape of the problem and we will tell you what consolidating it would take.
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