Case Study - Developments in the Energy Sector
Architecting Scalable Automation and Billing Systems in the Energy Sector
Architecting Scalable Automation and Billing Systems in the Energy Sector
Client: Largest Energy company in Europe
Project Scope: Billing stream architecture, flow automation between Salesforce and PowerCloud, end-to-end QA automation
Engagement Duration: 4 years
Tech Stack: Selenium, Playwright, Java, Spring Boot, GitLab, JUnit, TestNG, Cucumber
Roles: Solutions Architect, Automation QA Engineers
As one of Europe’s largest utility providers, our client needed to consolidate and modernize core business processes to keep pace with evolving regulatory demands, rising user expectations, and complex billing requirements. Their legacy testing practices and billing architecture were reaching critical complexity. From a systems architecture perspective, the main challenge was aligning automation, billing, and data integration across multiple platforms—including Salesforce and PowerCloud—without disrupting production-grade systems or compromising on security and compliance.
Our objective was twofold:
Build a flexible automation architecture that supports frequent releases and rigorous testing without bottlenecks.
Define and implement the Power2Cash billing stream—from conceptual architecture through to pipeline integration and automation validation.
We needed to unify QA and billing logic under scalable frameworks, support CI/CD pipelines, and increase the speed of both testing and system rollouts.
We began by evolving the pre-existing testing framework. From an architectural standpoint, our milestones were to:
Later in the engagement, we extended the architecture with Playwright for front-end testing, keeping the framework modular and compatible with new UI components introduced in parallel by Client teams.
As our client developed a new billing solution in-house, we were tasked with integrating this into the broader automation and system architecture. We designed and implemented:
The Power2Cash stream—an architecture covering billing, SEPA payments, and background jobs.
Automation integration hooks that validated the billing engine in sync with business logic and test pipelines.
A tooling layer for contract generation and framework improvements to increase contract preparation accuracy.
A bonus logic system, modularly built to plug into the billing engine and tested under various load scenarios.
Data preparation utilities to support automated test environments and streamline test setup time.
This ensured full test coverage for newly defined business rules without slowing down development velocity.
We worked in close coordination with our client’s architects and internal dev teams. Our workflow involved receiving high-level test cases, transforming them into automated suites, and validating each case against the system through manual triggers and automated CI pipelines. The modular nature of our frameworks allowed for frequent hand-offs and seamless integration with other internal systems.
Significant reduction in release preparation time, with automation covering hundreds of test cases across different flows.
Systematized billing logic, modular enough to support new billing models and loyalty schemes.
Stable QA pipelines that helped this client maintain compliance and readiness for external audits.
Improved test reliability and performance, enabling more confident and frequent releases.
As a Solutions Architect, the value I see in this project lies in how deeply aligned our architecture became with both the operational and strategic goals of the client. We didn’t just deliver tests—we delivered systems that think ahead, scale naturally, and leave room for innovation and upgrades.
Ready to architect scalable, compliant, automation-first solutions in energy or fintech? Let’s talk about how OceanoBe can build what’s next for your platform.