A $75M-a-Year Data Center Operator Turns Complex Energy Data Into Clear, Consistent Reporting
With an established cadence that helps save time and measure performance
Unified on one centralized Platform, ABEL™
Through ABEL™ to help build better procurement strategy across the portfolio
How Energy CX is helping a national data center and manufacturing operator secure better reporting for accruals, forecasts and hedge visibility across a 28-site portfolio.
The Challenge
Running 28 facilities across deregulated markets means hundreds of decisions across regions, utilities and suppliers each time a contract nears expiration. For this sophisticated energy buyer, the procurement strategy itself was solid. The problem was the operational lift.
Every month, the finance team received large, complicated spreadsheets from their previous broker and had to decipher which numbers they actually needed. The accrual process was inefficient, and the file layout didn't lend itself to clean budgeting or contract performance reporting.
As a sophisticated, well-informed buyer, the company evaluated the market and moved to Energy CX because it offered solutions to help them succeed: a transparent platform for contract and market data, clear reporting on budgeting and contract performance, and a support team to relieve the operational lift.
"We had a solid strategy, but every month our finance team was buried in a broker's spreadsheet trying to figure out which numbers actually mattered across our portfolio."
— Procurement Leader, National Data Center and Manufacturing Operator
How Energy CX Helped
Reporting: Energy CX streamlined accruals through a new file layout that gets accurate numbers back on time. They were also able to build budgets that forecast spend for the remainder of this year and the following year. A consolidated report was built to show every active hedge across the customer’s multi-site portfolio to pinpoint opportunities in each market.
Access to Real-Time Market Data: Alongside reporting, the customer gained access to Energy CX’s proprietary platform, ABEL™, giving them a centralized view of their entire portfolio and real-time market data to help them make better procurement decisions. Now, their strategy is backed by rate forecasts and futures data through ABEL™ so the customer always has market intelligence when it's needed.
Contract Management: Energy CX manages contract negotiations across the portfolio, working directly with every supplier in every market where the customer operates. That hands-on presence means favorable contract language gets negotiated routinely, not just at renewal. Energy CX also stays aligned with the customer's legal team on what's already pre-approved and what isn't, so contracts move straight to signature instead of starting from scratch with rounds of redlines.
Together, these changes moved a recurring administrative burden off the customer's internal teams and freed the procurement team to focus on building the best strategy for their portfolio.
The Outcome
With Energy CX, this sophisticated energy buyer gained a streamlined and consistent reporting cadence with accruals, forecasts and hedge visibility delivered across all 28 sites. That reporting cadence is the foundation for a North Star buying policy that gives leadership confidence in the strategy and gives their internal team executing it day to day a clear, consistent framework to work from.
“The Platform gave us one centralized view of all our properties. Accruals, forecasts, hedge visibility, are now all on a cadence we can actually plan around.”
— Procurement Leader, National Data Center and Manufacturing Operator
Why This Story Matters for Data center and Manufacturing Customers
Data center portfolios share a structural tension: energy is one of the largest line items and also one of the hardest to report on cleanly. The bigger the footprint, the more the reporting burden quietly eats away at hours that should be going to strategy, leading to more opportunities slipping through the cracks. This customer's switch to Energy CX shows that saving time and gaining clearer reporting is a strategic move. It changes what the procurement team has time to do and gives them access to financial-grade technology that surfaces opportunities hiding in plain sight, so they can improve their strategy while saving time.
"Running more than 20 sites means we're accountable to leadership for a number that used to change depending on whose spreadsheet we were reading. Everything was scattered and fragmented. Now we have clean reporting and a Platform that keeps our strategy centralized and our results measurable. That transparency is what helped our team stop sifting through data so we could focus more time on strategy."
Procurement Leader
National Data Center and Manufacturing Operator
INDUSTRY
Industrial & Manufacturing
FOOTPRINT
28 sites nationwide
ENERGY SPEND
~$75 million annually
PREVIOUS
Working with a different energy broker
STATUS
New Energy CX customer