Lives, not Just Loads. This has guided ENSEK from day one, and it sums up why I started this journey in 2010. Back then, I’d seen a complete misalignment between operational and financial processes in energy retail — there wasn’t one true source of data that everyone could trust. Month-end reporting was slow, painful, and often inaccurate. While CFOs still make judgement calls today, the difference is that these are now based on transparent, verifiable data at the lowest level of granularity — rather than opaque, aggregated figures.
Energy suppliers were routinely writing off large, unsubstantiated balances each year at audit — accepting that a few percent of their revenue would just go missing. We knew there had to be a better way. From the outset, ENSEK was built to solve this problem — using data and technology to clean up the sector, so suppliers could stop operating in the dark. After all, this business should be about improving people’s lives, not just shuffling energy loads around.
Gross margin reporting is the process of calculating the difference between revenue and cost of goods sold, providing insight into a supplier’s profitability. In energy retail, this process is often fragmented and delayed due to disconnected systems and manual workarounds.
In the early years, one of our biggest challenges was simply convincing industry leaders they had a problem. Many CFOs had normalised losing 2–3% of revenue each year — “just the way the industry operates.” Our first job was to change that mindset. We’d walk into meetings and say, “It doesn’t have to be this way.”
The opportunity was clear: if we could show a better way — built on complete accuracy and near-instant data — it would plug revenue leaks and enable smarter decisions. A few pioneering CFOs took that leap of faith. Once they saw the results, it validated our vision.
ENSEK built a unified platform that reconciles data from meter to ledger. We started by simulating what billing systems should be doing, using data from industry gateways to establish a reliable baseline. This approach proved we could deliver a single, accurate picture of financial truth.
About ten years ago, we launched our full platform — Ignition — built around the same gross margin engine that had defined our earliest work. Margin truth wasn’t an add-on — it was the starting point. As technology advanced, we optimised for speed and scale. Today, we can process massive data volumes and deliver next-day reporting at scale. This enables Working Day 1 (i.e. the first business day after month-end) close with confidence in the numbers.
ENSEK’s platform provides a single source of truth across operations, finance, and trading. This alignment ensures that everyone is working from the same data, enabling faster, more accurate decisions.
The system flags data gaps and quantifies their financial impact. For example, it can show that resolving a specific issue would improve settlement or billing performance by a measurable amount. This turns data into action and transforms financial processes from reactive to proactive.
ENSEK’s platform has helped customers reduce revenue leakage (the loss of expected revenue due to billing errors, data gaps, or process failures) significantly. Historically, suppliers expected to lose 2–3% of revenue annually. By identifying and resolving issues early, some have avoided significant write-offs — tens of millions of pounds in some cases.
In one case, we identified a £100 million issue for a large supplier — a finding that ultimately contributed to their market exit. In contrast, newer suppliers using our platform from day one have kept leakage well below industry norms, directly improving profitability.
The platform also accelerates month-end close. Data preparation routines that used to take 1–2 weeks are now condensed into a few hours — enabling much faster and more confident month-end close. This shift allows finance teams to focus on analysis and strategy rather than data cleanup, increasing their value to the business. If you can nail the numbers on Day 1, you’re no longer on the back foot — you can move straight into understanding the “why” behind the numbers and taking action. We hear from finance teams that it’s a night-and-day difference: they’ve shifted from chasing data to becoming true strategic partners in the business.
With real-time margin visibility in place, ENSEK is expanding into forecasting and scenario modelling. This includes cash-flow forecasting (rules ensuring suppliers have sufficient financial resources to operate), which is essential for meeting new regulatory requirements such as capital adequacy tests from the Office of Gas and Electricity Markets (Ofgem) in the United Kingdom.
As suppliers diversify into services like electric vehicle (EV) charging, home batteries, or smart home technology, our platform helps them assess profitability at a granular level. This enables strategic investment decisions based on accurate, timely data.
We’re also preparing for upcoming industry changes, such as market-wide half-hourly settlement (an upcoming industry reform requiring more granular energy usage data reporting). Our goal is to ensure customers are equipped not just to understand their current performance, but to anticipate and shape their future.
I’m immensely proud of how far we’ve come, but I’m even more excited about what’s ahead. We set out to solve a problem that many thought couldn’t be solved — and we did it, systematically and at scale. That focus on clarity, accuracy and action has always been in ENSEK’s DNA.
If you’re an energy supplier tired of flying blind and ready to run your business with true clarity and confidence, I invite you to join us on this journey — because nothing beats knowing.