Powering Electrabel

to New Performance Levels

The ability to rapidly adapt to market conditions defines success in the Energy sector.

As the largest power company in the Benelux countries, GDF/Suez/Electrabel has worked with Aprico Consultants on a wide range of projects aimed at enhancing operations’ agility:

• Enterprise Architecture and Governance: Electrabel wanted to move its business into a standards environment, so it could react quickly to changes in the market place. Aprico Consultants was asked to define the Company’s solution/software architecture, based on platform and component standards, as well as engineering best practices, to ensure software quality.
• Trading Operations:  energy traders now get an up-to-date view of Europe’s markets through real-time access to trading data, indicators on energy availability for sale/purchase, calculations of positions and exposure so they can stay abreast of fast-changing markets.
• Software Development Life Cycle Management: Aprico designed standards and procedures for tracking defects and managing software changes on enterprise-wide projects, thus eliminating duplication of effort and data, and increasing quality assurance.

Easi-Wal Sets New Standards

For Citizen Services

In today’s world, citizens are no longer passive consumers of public services. They have come to expect easy access and transparency to the data and processes that affect them.

The Region of Wallonia’s Easi-Wal government agency aims to help citizens help themselves. It lets them cut through the red tape, paperwork and long lines through the use of e-government capabilities and tools available to municipalities, citizens and enterprises.

A portal provides online access to personal data produced by relevant agencies – such as birth certificates, IDs, and social security payment information. Individual citizens can also create their own queries to view their personal data.

The result? Swift delivery of services to citizens… and optimal public value.

Breaking Down the Silos

The “Crossroad Bank” is a standards-based platform initiated by Easi-Wal to promote inter-agency information and resource sharing. By integrating multiple stovepipe systems and databases, it allows single-access to trusted information owned by various government agencies.

Aprico Consultants’ engagement covers strategy, organization and IT-related aspects:

• Architecture principles based on well-known enterprise frameworks (TOGAF, Praxeme)
• SOA platform selection and business service definition
• Organizational scenarios
• Business process simplification via Praxeme semantic and pragmatic modeling.

These initiatives mean increased transparency for managing the Region’s social and economic resources for development.

How BELGACOM Connects with Customers

As Belgium’s leading provider of telephony, internet and television services, Belgacom wanted to be even more responsive to its customer needs.

Aprico Consultants created a consolidated view of customer information across the company’s fixed line, mobile, data and internet services. A single platform now provides one selling point for the company’s service and product offering. Belgacom sales reps can access a comprehensive view of customers, better understand their needs, and take advantage of cross-selling and up-selling opportunities.

Technically Speaking

The technical architecture recommended by Aprico Consultants provides a high degree of flexibility and scalability to ease legacy system integration. This was achieved through:

• Integration with the newly acquired Proximus wireless operator
• SOA platform evolution with associated service creation and management
• Deployment of a Service Repository.
• Introduction of an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) and common data model.
• Technical recommendations and best practices

The company can now respond faster to changes in business or organizational requirements, generate revenue from new billable services, and achieve mass-market operational efficiency.

MIVB/STIB: a Platform for Change

As Belgium’s largest public transport company, MIVB/STIB serves a population of 1.1M inhabitants in the Brussels metropolitan area. The supported means of public transportation include:

• Metro
• Tramway
• Bus lines
• Night bus lines

In the face of Brussels’ fast-growing ridership, MIVB/STIB wanted a transportation and logistics solution based on integrated business processes. This means that automating the management of vehicle depot entry/exits in near real-time was required to optimize asset utilization and operational efficiencies. To that end, Aprico Consultants implemented a system that plans, executes, and monitors rolling stock and workshop maintenance. This required the following:

• Legacy system integration (SAP, mainframes…)
• A rich user interface with an interactive view of depots and tracks
• Unified scheduling of train crews and fleet tasks

The result? Renewed confidence that the company can consistently deliver quality service through improved scheduling efficiency.

AXA Puts a Premium on Mobile Brokers

AXA Belgium provides business and individual customers with insurance and financial products through multiple channels – including more than 5000 insurance brokers.

Successful insurance brokerage service requires access to real-time, accurate information. That’s why Axa Belgium wanted to make it easier for agents to write business using web-based mobile applications. This required integrating front-office and administration systems to eliminate the complexity of dealing with multiple systems and achieve the following:

• Mobile Connectivity: brokers can access a Front Office application and manage a domain-specific portfolio from wherever they are. They can now get real-time rating and quoting of new policies online in order to process business faster and improve customer service.
• Streamlined Claims Service: A new distributed and client-server system now automates and manages the claims process. Call center operators can quickly open a case and record an accident in the mainframe, reducing claims costs, accelerating the processing cycle, and optimizing customer service.