TXU Energy

Energy company prepares loyalty programs to prepare for a new deregulated energy market.

Problem

TXU maintains relationships with local equipment dealers/installers through their Authorized Dealer Network. TXU maintained this data in-house in Lotus Notes, a document-based database system. An outside marketing firm was contacted to assist in data analysis, for which they required Microsoft Access, a relational database system. Since Notes and Access are so fundamentally different in the way data is stored and used, moving the data around in a seamless way was the biggest challenge.

Solution

BDC was called on to build the analysis system for the outside firm and to make sure data could be replicated between systems automatically. Because data integrity was a principal goal, Microsoft SQL Server was used as a backend database system to connect with Notes via secure Internet channels. After the connector for Notes was built, Access connected to the SQL Server database and a front-end was built for the marketing team. Since users of this system were spread out and some supporting data was kept in Access only, MS Access-based replication was employed.

Results

Now all users could make changes and share results seamlessly. The new Access-based system was so easy to use and share information that TXU wanted to use the same system in house as a supplement to the Notes database.