How Spark Energy Moved to One Platform

After a decade of growth through acquisitions, Spark Energy consolidated onto VertexOne's VXretail and VXexchange platforms, cutting redundant costs and finding a partner that gives its team the control and customization it needs.

The Challenge

Years of Acquisitions Created Costly, Fragmented Operations

Spark Energy has grown almost entirely through acquisition, and every new brand arrived with its own billing system and its own processes. As a result, Spark's operations team was managing multiple systems and having to think about which brand they were working on before they could think about the work itself.

For years, Spark ran two billing systems side by side to support the business as it grew. Consolidating them was never a simple switch: moving customers from one billing environment to another takes months of setup and testing, regardless of timing or circumstances.

What actually forced the decision was more practical. Spark was paying twice for overlapping systems. Between the added cost and the widening service gap, consolidating onto one platform stopped being optional.

The Solution

Consolidating a Decade of Brands Onto VXretail

By the time Spark made that call, the answer was already taking shape. Spark's relationship with VertexOne dates back to 2015, when the company acquired a business running on VertexOne's platform. As Spark acquired other retail energy brands, many of them also operated on VertexOne's VXretail.

What sealed the decision wasn't any single feature so much as fit. Spark's operations team is experienced. They wanted more control to pull reports, access their data, and update configurations. VXretail's built-in reporting tools, including on-demand and scheduled reports, plus the ability to query billing data directly, gave them exactly that. Day to day, it also meant less friction: Spark's accounting team can now pull a customer's full aging history from one screen, instead of clicking through multiple screens on their old system to get the same answer.

Spark also points to the relationship itself. Spark flagged a state-driven rate-change requirement that was eating manual time, and VertexOne's product team turned it into a built-in automation for every customer on the platform. That responsiveness helps Spark react to market changes and customer demands, with more control over its business and the ability to act in real time on the platform, which gives the team an edge.

The Results

Lower Costs, Faster Operations, Stronger Partnership

"It feels more like a partnership, which is important. They want us to succeed."

-Misti Day, VP of Operations and Operational Accounting, Spark Energy

• One billing system. Every acquired brand now runs on the same platform, something Spark has wanted since 2011.
• Lower costs. Consolidating billing systems eliminated the expense of running two systems in parallel, the single biggest factor in Spark's decision to switch.
• Simplified training. Data and processes are now consistent across every brand, so new employees learn one system instead of several, with only state-level regulatory differences left to account for.
• More control. Spark's team resolves most requests directly in VXretail instead of filing a support ticket and waiting, which means full transparency into what is happening on an account and a faster response for customers.
• More efficient operations. Spark's operations team has gone from about 40 people to about 25 over time, a mix of process automation and other organizational changes, achieved through attrition rather than layoffs.
• A product team that listens. Spark says the kind of responsiveness behind that rate-change automation has been the pattern for years, not a one-off.

Looking Ahead

Spark's next goal is more of the same instinct that got them here: automate thoughtfully. With every brand now on the same platform, Spark's team is spending less time on manual entry and more time on review and analysis, exactly the kind of capacity a company that keeps growing needs.

That's the kind of problem Spark expects to keep solving alongside VertexOne. The team knows exactly who to reach when something needs attention, and as Spark continues to grow, that responsiveness is expected to matter as much as anything the platform does on its own.