overview

Contigo’s enVoy product provides the link between the Energy trading function, and external data agents and other industry flows. Built initially to provide the capability to submit UK ECVNA, Physical Notifications and Bid-offer data, enVoy provides the extensibility to handle a range of data aggregation, transport and transmission capabilities. Designed from the ground up and built with the latest Microsoft technologies, enVoy sets the new standard for fast, responsive and reliable intra-industry data flow management.

Notification and Submission errors can be very costly. enVoy provides a comprehensive monitoring, reconciliation and error detection capability combined with a reliable and fully auditable infrastructure to give you confidence that your operational data is securely and accurately processed in a timely and robust manner.

flexibility and control

enVoy simplifies the process of sending and receiving industry data flows. The system has been built with a series of components, each optimised for the discrete task required. Through careful design of these components, multiple file types can be controlled through a single common and consistent interface. enVoy converts and stores all data flows as industry standard XML allowing data to be processed and integrated with other industry systems, products and tools with ease.

Supporting a common communication framework, enVoy provides a robust capability to transfer trading and operational data for a range of scenarios. Initially created to support ECVNA and NGT submissions for the UK Electricity market, the framework can be extended to provide management of other data flows in other markets, such as gas nominations or interconnector submissions.

enVoys modular component framework ensures straightforward integration with multiple trading and scheduling systems and can be configured to administer the most complex trading scenarios - multiple parties, multiple agents, multiple trading systems etc. It is equally suitable for new entrants as well as established companies trading in the UK Electricity market.

supported modules

enVoy currently provides services to manage a number of submissions for the UK Power Market - Contract Volume Notifications (UK ECVNA), Physical Notifications (IPN/FPN) and Bid Offer submissions (BOD). Further modules are in development for other European trading markets and will be available in the near future.

ECVNA notifications

enVoy provides a best of breed ECVNA notification capability allowing you to actively monitor and reconcile your traded and notified position in real-time. Interfaces to multiple trading systems are supported through a common Trade Provider module allowing enVoy to support multiple ECVNA notification agents and multiple ‘House’ counterparties with the most complex notification scenarios.

enVoy maintains a real-time view of your notified position which is automatically reconciled to your internal trade data ensuring instant visibility of imbalance situations where either you or a third party needs to send a notification.

Net and Gross notification, maintenance of ECVNAA keys and reconciliation of the various Elexon notification reports are all supported ‘out of the box’.

NGT submissions

enVoy provides the ability to issue Physical Notifications, Bid Offer submissions and other related submissions to NGT. Submission data can be manually entered, generated from templates or submitted from an external scheduling system. enVoy maintains a complete audit log of all submissions made and maintains the real-time position of those submissions. The system monitors all acknowledgements and acceptance data flows, automatically raising alerts when errors are detected.

enVoy can be configured to automatically extract submission data from an external system or to receive it based upon trigger events. All submissions are validated against BMU parameter data and user-configurable submission rules. Submission data can be reconciled against data held in an external system and against Contigo’s enVision BMRA module.

interoperability

Contigo understand that most Energy companies have a heterogeneous IT environment with a range of systems required to support the complexities of the energy trading business. Contigo’s applications are designed to easily integrate into these environments by providing a range of interoperability options and a modular architecture.

Trade and position data is accessed from your ETRM system via an industry-standard ‘provider architecture’. An enTrader provider is included as part of the enVoy product offering. Alternatively, providers for other ETRM systems can be readily developed, either in house, or by Contigo. Additionally, a rich Web Service interface provides other ETRM applications with full access to enVoy’s functionality.

Many of the industry data flows use FTP as the transport mechanism. enVoy provides its own FTP capability but can also interface to a company’s existing FTP infrastructure. Moreover, enVoy is designed to integrate with Microsoft’s BizTalk platform to allow client-specific orchestrations and workflow. This provides great flexibility in defining custom processing around each data flow.

management by exception

enVoy ensures reliable transport of data between parties; as such there is less need to “operate” the system. Through the use of the ‘management by exception’ principle, issues and alerts are only raised when they require management or user attention, reducing the burden on operational staff and ensuring their focus on other key activities.

enVoy allows detailed definition of alert thresholds and priorities allowing a range of alert conditions to be properly managed. Alerts are automatically generated when these conditions are met, for example imbalance positions or late acknowledgement or acceptance from Elexon.

enVoy maintains a real-time view of notification and submission status and automatically reconciles back to the backend trading and scheduling systems. Flexible validation rules ensure notification and submission data is fully validated before submission. All validation issues are raised through to the system user for resolution.

agent simulation

enVoy’s supported modules also ship with a powerful agent simulator, allowing end-to-end test scenarios to be executed quickly. The simulator provides automated responses for each supported submission type, and also provides the capability to replicate failures and return rejections. Agent simulation becomes a vital tool when industry-mandated changes to file specifications are being made.

flexible user interface

enVoy’s web-based user interface is based on Contigo’s Jazz Framework UI components. This provides a common look and feel and common facilities across all Contigo’s products. Features such as user-customisation, sophisticated security, activity auditing and dashboards are included. The user interface uses the latest Ajax technology to provide a fast and interactive experience.

technical features

For more information on enVoy or our other products and services, please contact Simon Piercy on 08458 386848 or sales@contigo.co.uk.