Genesis Energy
www.genesisenergy.co.nz
Genesis Energy Limited is the largest electricity and natural gas retailer in New Zealand, with over 400,000 customers. Genesis employs more than 1000 staff and are always seeking new ways to engage with customers.
Genesis were using an in-house legacy system for customer sign-on. Recognising ever-increasing requirements around security and seeking to enhance their customer experience, they wanted a single identity platform that would allow customers to self-service sign up, as well as allow their staff to authenticate with their existing Microsoft Azure AD identities.
Moving their customer credentials into a new, and highly secure and resilient platform meant Genesis could further improve the security of their customer data and reduce the risk of cyber security threats. Genesis were keen to move to a solution that allowed them to continually innovate.
“We are focussed on creating digital platforms that are engaging for our customers, earning a share of their precious screen time,” says Peter Kennedy, General Manager of Growth & Innovation. “Key to achieving the high level of engagement is reducing any barriers to sign-in (making sign-in super simple whilst being secure), and creating compelling reasons to engage with the platform (features that are intriguing and help solve the customers’ problems).”
Genesis decided on a migration to Microsoft Azure Active Directory B2C, a platform that effectively manages customer, consumer, and citizen access to B2C applications, as well as providing enterprise-level scalability and availability.
The objectives were simple: to provide single-sign-on across multiple technical initiatives, leverage the credential security of Azure, while also being able to unlock additional benefits via a more modern authentication platform.
Genesis worked closely with Inde as their Azure B2C specialist partner. Inde's task was to design and develop the Azure AD B2C platform and integrate with Genesis's web and mobile apps along with custom key functionality specifically tailored for Genesis enabling:
Over 300,000 end-user accounts were safely activated in one night, and they were able to sign in the next morning with the Azure AD B2C platform.
"By adopting a recognised, standards-based platform, but one that's also flexible enough to integrate with their existing systems, Genesis experienced a seamless, transparent transition," says Rik Roberts, Inde's Chief Technology Officer. "And that's key - especially when dealing with 300,000 identities in one day!"
Although the new platform has only been live for a couple of months, Genesis’s Senior Product Owner Darren Tsang says they are looking forward to taking advantage of the innovation opportunities Azure offers. Genesis are now able to go to market quicker for new tech solutions as they can easily integrate identity and authentication into their B2C platform, and can now roll out new solutions faster to end-users. "We have some projects coming up - like allowing users to log in using their Google or Facebook accounts. We've got the foundation down now, and we can start working on those," Darren explains.
And there's more in the pipeline. "In the near future, with B2C, our plan is to integrate it with our new mobile apps,” says Darren. “And we're also keen to connect to voice and IOT devices."
Since going live in September, Darren says that the level of customer satisfaction can be measured by the total lack of complaints. "When it comes to something like this, the ideal outcome is to hear nothing," he explains. "If there are problems with signing in, customers are quick to speak up. For us, the best feedback is no feedback. It means everything worked during the transition and is continuing to work now."
Security has improved significantly, as customer identities are now secured in Azure AD B2C. "Because increased security was really at the core of this whole project, we've now got peace of mind from a security perspective."
Darren goes on to note the benefits of Genesis's ongoing relationship with Inde. "Inde have been able to meet every challenge that we’ve had, and provide us guidance,” he says. “They knew what we wanted - not an off-the-shelf solution - but something that was unique and tailored for our specific requirements."
"This is the kind of thing we love - enabling our clients to innovate further and engage with their customers more easily," Rik adds. "Being a ‘work-with’ partner - it’s fantastic that we've been able to help Genesis Energy with an updated, global and secure IAM platform for their end-customer."
Keen to learn more about Azure AD B2C and how it can help improve engagement with your customers? Drop us a line and we'll get a discussion started.
