Energy and utilities
Most energy brokers run their book on a CRM built for generic B2B sales, and generic B2B sales software has no concept of a Contract End Date, a meter point, or an uplift that has to survive a clawback calculation eighteen months after the deal was signed. We build broker CRM platforms around the way an energy book actually behaves: a pipeline ranked by CED rather than sales stage, multi-site customer records built on MPAN and MPRN hierarchies, and commission logic that is calculated once, correctly, at source.
This is not a CRM with an energy skin applied to it. The renewal workflow, the supplier panel structure, the compliance evidence trail for Letters of Authority (LOAs) and PECR consent, and the reporting a broker's own management team and its supplier partners expect are designed in from the data model up.
The workflow this replaces
Before a CRM is built around it, the renewal cycle for a mid-sized brokerage typically looks like this, repeated per meter point, across every account manager's book.
Step 01
Someone — often an operations manager rather than the account manager who owns the relationship — runs a weekly or monthly export of contracts and filters by Contract End Date to work out which accounts are entering their renewal window, typically defined as somewhere between three and six months before expiry depending on the supplier and the contract length.
Step 02
Before a renewal quote can be requested, the broker checks whether the existing LOA still covers the meter point and the time window needed. If it has expired or was never scoped to include renewal activity, a new LOA has to be requested and signed before any supplier will engage, which adds days or weeks to a process already running against a hard deadline.
Step 03
The account manager gathers the site's estimated annual consumption (EAC) or annual quantity (AQ), its current unit rates and standing charge, and its settlement classification — half-hourly or non-half-hourly, and profile class where applicable — because a supplier quotation needs all of this before it will return a comparable price.
Step 04
Requests go out to the suppliers on the broker's panel, some via a quotation API returning a price within minutes, most via a matrix price file that has to be looked up manually against the site's consumption band and contract length, or via a portal that has to be checked individually.
Step 05
The broker's margin — the uplift added on top of the wholesale-plus-network rate the supplier returns — is added per pence per kilowatt hour, at a level that may vary by agent, by client relationship, or by supplier depending on internal policy, and the resulting options are assembled into a comparison for the customer.
Step 06
Once a rate is accepted, the supplier issues a contract, which the broker tracks manually to confirm it has been signed and returned before the current contract's out-of-contract cliff edge arrives, because a signed-but-unreturned contract provides no protection against a deemed rate.
Step 07
Supplier commission or uplift payment arrives on a remittance statement weeks or months after the contract goes live, at which point someone checks it against what was expected — a check made harder because the original calculation was never captured in a system, only in whatever spreadsheet was current at the time.
Every step above is achievable by a competent operations team working manually. The CRM we build does not remove the judgement calls a broker makes about which supplier to push or how to price a relationship — it removes the manual reconstruction of facts that are already known: the CED, the LOA status, the consumption profile, and the commission rule that should apply.
What we build
A pipeline view ranked by Contract End Date rather than sales stage, with configurable alert windows per contract length and per supplier, so an account manager sees which accounts need action this week rather than filtering a spreadsheet to find out.
Customer, site and meter point held as a linked hierarchy, each meter point carrying its full MPAN core and top line or MPRN, its settlement classification, and its current and historical contracts, so portfolio-level figures are always a query rather than a manual roll-up.
LOA capture, scope — which meter points and which activities it covers — expiry date, and e-signature status held against the account, with alerts before an LOA lapses on a live pipeline opportunity.
A record of which suppliers the brokerage holds terms with, current commission and uplift agreements per supplier, and which suppliers are actively quoting versus paused, so pipeline routing reflects live commercial relationships rather than a static list.
Uplift configured per agent, per supplier and per contract term, calculated automatically at point of contract confirmation, with clawback rules applied and traceable when a contract is cancelled or terminated early.
Integration with existing call recording infrastructure so recordings, LOA documents and PECR consent status are all retrievable against a single account record, rather than living in three unconnected systems.
Consent status, source and date captured against every contact, with suppression list checking run before any outbound campaign, and a visible audit trail of what basis was relied on for each piece of outbound contact.
Pipeline value by CED window, agent performance against commission targets, and portfolio composition by supplier and by settlement type, built as standing reports rather than ad hoc exports.
Integrations
Metering and market reference data
Supplier connectivity
Compliance and contact
Finance
Identity and communication
Where a brokerage already runs telephony or dialler infrastructure that works well, we integrate with it rather than replacing it; the CRM's job is to make the compliance record retrievable against the account, not to re-provision infrastructure that already does its job.
Data and compliance
Architecture note
The core data model treats the meter point, not the customer, as the primary unit of record, because contract terms, CED, settlement classification and consumption all attach at meter point level. Customer and site records exist as aggregation layers above it, which is what makes multi-site portfolio reporting reliable rather than reconstructed.
Rate and pricing calculations run as a distinct service from the CRM record layer, so commission and uplift rules can be updated, versioned and audited without touching the customer-facing data. This separation also makes it possible to plug in a dedicated quote and tender engine later without rebuilding the CRM.
Compliance evidence — LOA documents, call recordings, PECR consent logs — is stored with references held in the CRM rather than as binary blobs inside it, so retention policy and access control can be applied per document type without bloating the operational database.
Supplier connectivity is built as an adapter layer, because every supplier's quotation API or matrix file format is different and suppliers change formats without much notice. New suppliers are added by writing a new adapter against a stable internal rate model, not by reworking the pipeline logic.
Timeline
Weeks 1-3
Mapping of the current pipeline process, supplier panel and commission rules, data quality assessment of existing MPAN and MPRN records, and a phased build plan.
Weeks 4-6
Meter point hierarchy design, migration mapping from the existing CRM or spreadsheets, and validation rules for MPAN and MPRN formats.
Weeks 7-11
CED-driven pipeline view, alert configuration per contract length and supplier, and the site and portfolio views account managers use daily.
Weeks 12-15
LOA capture and e-signature integration, call recording integration, and PECR consent and suppression tracking.
Weeks 16-19
Commission and uplift engine, clawback logic, supplier panel management and remittance reconciliation support.
Weeks 20-23
Data migration from the legacy system, parallel running with the existing CRM, and account manager training.
Weeks 24-26
Cutover, monitoring of pipeline accuracy and alert firing, and a defined period of prioritised bug fixing before the retainer phase begins.
Indicative cost
Bands assume a UK-based multi-site brokerage with an established supplier panel. A single-site consultancy with a smaller book typically sits at the lower end; a brokerage integrating several acquired books sits at the upper end.
Where this sits
Questions
Because CED, not sales stage, is the fact that determines when a renewal conversation is legally and commercially possible, and when a site is exposed to an out-of-contract or deemed rate. A stage-based pipeline tells you where a deal sits in a process; a CED-driven pipeline tells you which of several hundred accounts needs attention this week, ranked by the date that actually matters.
Every meter point — identified by its full MPAN core and top line for electricity or its MPRN for gas — is a child record of a site, and every site rolls up to a parent customer. A portfolio view shows total annual quantity, the spread of contract end dates, and blended pricing across the estate without anyone reassembling it from separate spreadsheets.
Yes. Commission and uplift rules are configured per agent, per supplier and per contract term, and calculated at the point a contract is confirmed against the agreed unit rate. Clawback on early termination or contract cancellation is tracked against the original calculation so the adjustment is traceable rather than a manual correction in a spreadsheet.
It requires that recordings are captured for relevant sales calls, retained for a defined period, and retrievable against the specific account and contract they relate to, so a complaint or an audit request can be answered from the CRM rather than from a separate telephony system with no link to the customer record. Confirm required retention period with your compliance adviser.
It sits alongside them. We integrate with existing call recording and dialler platforms so calls, consent status and PECR suppression checks are visible against the account, rather than rebuilding telephony infrastructure that already works.
Send the problem, not a brief. We will tell you whether it is a project we should be involved in.
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