Urbio's API: A Digital Bridge between Energy Planning Software, CRMs and Websites

Paradoxically, while district heating is all about networks and interconnections, the work that goes into planning them has been trapped in silos.

On one side, engineers work with sophisticated software for simulating design scenarios. On the other, commercial teams manage customer relations in a separate CRM system and ad hoc mail campaigns. This disconnect doesn't just slow down projects—it creates a major gap between utilities, their ambitious carbon and ROI goals, and their customers.

Urbio’s API is designed to close this gap by connecting planning tools directly to customer acquisition channels.

What is an API?

Think of an API (Application Programming Interface) as a 'digital bridge': it allows Urbio to securely send and receive information with your other business applications, with no human needed. This unlocks automations that accelerate sales, boost network ROI, and align commercial and technical teams.

The High Cost of Disconnected Data

Picture this: Your engineering team identifies 50 high-potential buildings—high heat demand, currently on fossil boilers, all within 200m of your existing network. Their model contains valuable insights: heat price, connection costs, pipe layout. Yet this crucial intelligence remains locked in a spreadsheet, as your sales team flies blind in their next customer call or outreach campaign.

Unsurprisingly, siloed approaches result in higher acquisition costs, missed opportunities, and networks that are underutilized—and underperform financially.

This structural disconnect is the root of a critical bottleneck, costing organizations millions of euros in project costs, customer acquisition, unsynced trench excavation work and suboptimal infrastructure investments.

To solve this, the industry is turning towards digitization and, specifically, the use of APIs.

Three Powerful Workflows Unlocked by the API

Urbio’s API allows technical and commercial data to flow seamlessly between applications.

Here's three proven workflows to illustrate what can be done.

1. Automated Lead Generation: Urbio Sends Data to Your Website

Turn your public website from a static brochure into a 24/7 customer acquisition engine.

A building owner visits your utility website, types in their address to instantly get a customized quote for connecting to your network. In the background, the API sent a query to Urbio's calculator which returned the quote data based on the building's estimated power requirements and pricing, all in real-time.

The Win: Your website evolves from a static brochure into an automated lead generation engine. An "always-on" channel to serve your customers when they're ready, with hyper-personalized content. Swiss energy provider CKW saw an uptick of inbound requests after setting up this workflow.

2. Spatial CRM: When External Market Data Gets Mapped in Urbio:

Bring live market intelligence directly into your district heating network planning platform.

You've collected customer interest—captured from webforms or surveys. Data like "I am interested in connecting within the next year". It's sitting in a spreadsheet, but the piecharts and address lists aren't actionable. With as little as a drag-and-drop—or a direct API integration with your survey—the data appears in a georeferenced map thanks to Urbio's built-in geocoding and custom criteria. Engineers can immediately visualize "hot spots" of demand and link this commercial data to the technical metrics of the network.

The Win: This is critical for densification strategies. EKT used Urbio as a 'spatial CRM' to manage customer interest, leading to a +10% increase in heat sales year over year by allowing them to rapidly spot and act on opportunities for densification.

3. Bi-directional integration: Urbio-to-CRM, CRM-to-Urbio

Create a seamless, bi-directional sync between your technical and commercial departments.

Urbio identifies a cluster of high-potential buildings based on their energy demand and distance to the network, and automatically pushes them as qualified, prioritized leads into your CRM (e.g., Salesforce, Freshsales, SAP). Conversely, when a sales rep updates a deal status to "Closed-lost" in the CRM, the planning map in Urbio immediately updates, ensuring technical teams don't waste time planning for that building.

The Win: This is the 'single-point-of-truth' (SPOT) that eliminates data silos and aligns the entire team. Utilities like Romande Energie have leveraged this integration to shorten sales cycles and boost the ROI of existing networks.

Conclusion: A Unified Workflow

Beyond the technicality of APIs are tangible benefits that reward those embracing digitization:

• Accelerating sales cycles and improving conversion rates, thanks to precise, hyper-personalized insights in sales activities

• Increased network ROI, by revealing network densification opportunities, and focusing resources accordingly

• Team alignment and reduced friction, leveraging a "single-point-of-truth" framework between diverse teams.

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Want to unlock your streamlined workflow?

👉 Try Urbio for free or talk to our team about getting started.