Lower Efforts and Ease of Use for Stadtwerke Augsburg

The SEEBURGER MaKo (‘Market Communication’) Cloud Service was developed specifically for the German energy market and takes care of the exchange of all messages between market partners. With MaKo 2020, the latest adaptation of electronic market communication in the electricity sector addresses the requirements of the Metering Point Operation Act which came into force on 1 December 2019.

Such regular data format changes, new regulatory requirements as well as increasing security in communication has tied up resources and caused high recurring costs for Stadtwerke Augsburg (swa). To ensure that MaKo processes run more efficiently, more cost-effectively and with less personnel expenditure in the future, Stadtwerke Augsburg (swa) opted for the SEEBURGER MaKo Cloud Service.

As is often the case, a resource bottleneck in the IT and the line-of-business departments was the trigger for swa to look for a MaKo cloud solution. The goal of Michael Schnall, Project Manager IT at the municipal utility, was to professionalize the support of the systems and the MaKo agreements (such as certificate exchange) with the market partners. As Stadtwerke Augsburg (swa) had been working with SEEBURGER AG for many years using for instance ZUGFeRD for electronic invoicing, it was a logical step to extend this trusted partnership to the MaKo Cloud Service.

Such a grown trust is the result of many years of positive and constructive cooperation, which was reflected in this project implementation. The result shows that even after a short time frame, the expected internal IT relief is already clearly noticeable. For Michael Schnall, there is no question that the cloud operation will soon take effect in other relevant areas.