ENXSuite has come out with a new version of its flagship product that it says will more tightly link energy and resource consumption to other corporate functions.
Version 6.0 of the software effectively makes it far easier to get real-time information on energy consumption at different facilities or within different groups, and then cross-check it against compensation, budgets, output or other information and data scrubbed from other enterprise applications and databases.
"There is a business process around energy that is completely missing from corporate America today. Our platform lets you manage the performance of your energy assets as financial assets," said CEO Beatriz Infante, who took over the company (formerly Carbonetworks) in June. "You don't have to go off and get another report."
The company also will integrate its platform more tightly with building management systems and demand response services for better efficiency and automation. Hypothetically, a CFO could set cost targets for facilities that could then be achieved through the energy management software negotiating with a demand response provider.
Along with the new software, ENXsuite trotted out some metrics on its progress. The company's software has been deployed at 12,000 sites and manages over 110 million megawatt hours of energy consumption. (It's a bit of a weird metric, but there you have it.) Customers include Sears, Northrup Grumman and Morgan Stanley. Still, ENXSuite was struggling earlier this year and switched its focus from carbon to energy management.
If the tone of the company's plan sounds more like the sort of strategies and marketing pitches you'd hear from traditional corporate software vendors like Oracle, you'd be right. One of Infante's goals is to get the company to function more like Oracle and SAP. Enfante came out of Oracle and has been staffing the executive ranks with alumni from those companies and competitors like Hara.
"We've increased the pipeline by 10 times," she said. "The quality of the RFPs is dramatically different."
Part of that evolution will also involve taking on competitors more directly. SAP, Oracle, Salesforce and the like have engaged in various verbal spats with each other for years in public.
When it comes to C3, the energy management company founded by Tom Siebel that still likes to pretend it is in stealth mode, Infante says she's not fazed.
"All I do is point to Cassatt," she said. Cassatt pulled in $200 million in funds from investors but ultimately got sold for $5 million on $3 million in revenue, she said. "They tried to reinvent the wheel and people didn't want a new wheel."
Hara, the company spawned by SAP alumni that has hoovered in 40-plus large customers like the City of Philadelphia, came up a few times in conversation, too.