Powering the systems that power New Zealand

Since 2009, YouDo has built and supported more than 10 applications across Transpower’s connected organisations, helping Energy Market Services (EMS) turn huge volumes of market and metering data into reliable services for New Zealand’s energy market.  

Our success comes down to knowing the systems deeply, understanding what customers need, asking useful questions, and being honest about what’s needed to get the best outcome.

It does help that we’ve known the EMS team for 16 years – at this point, remembering the first project is its own project!

Making em6 the best place for traders to get market data

Data is only helpful if people can use it. em6 is New Zealand’s electricity data hub that gives participants, traders, and analysts the information they need – with more flexibility and insights than the official alternative.

As Product Owner, Nick Warren keeps the em6 roadmap highly responsive to what market participants find genuinely useful, from custom dashboards and widgets to data feeds, generation detail, and more accurate carbon emissions visibility.

YouDo’s role is to help Nick and the EMS team keep that roadmap moving. 

When we were first brought into em6, launching new features was taking longer than it should. We rewrote key parts of the frontend so the team could prototype and deploy improvements faster, shortening some turnaround times from weeks to days.

That speed matters because em6 needs to keep pace with regulatory change, customer needs, and a market where data is becoming more complex, more immediate, and more urgent to act on.

Beyond additional capacity, our value is in being close enough to know the system and external enough to see future opportunities. 

And, crucially, providing accurate estimates – as Nick says,

 “YouDo provide clear and transparent estimates, which helps us plan with confidence.”

Building applications that still deliver (16 years later!)

One of YouDo’s major projects with EMS was the Grid Meter Management System, or GMMS: a bespoke application built to manage the complexity of grid metering data in New Zealand’s electricity market.

Before GMMS, EMS was using an offshore, off-the-shelf product. It worked, but it was expensive, and much of what made it useful had come from EMS’ own inputs. 

For Ian Martin, Metering Services Manager at EMS, the question became: do we keep adapting someone else’s system with our IP, or build something we own that reflects the New Zealand market?

That decision led to one of EMS’ first large agile software builds. Instead of handing over a long specification and waiting for a finished product, Ian’s team worked closely with YouDo, shaping the system as they learned. 

He explains that it was a big shift in thinking, but one that gave EMS far more input and helped the application get useful quickly.

That flexibility is by design. GMMS is a defining example of what good bespoke software should do: solve the problem in front of you, while leaving room for the problems the market has not created yet. 

GMMS was designed so users could organise, combine, convert, and work with data intuitively – and without requiring a developer for every new request.

In an energy sector moving toward more flexibility, more distributed assets, and more complex data, these kinds of applications are crucial.

Being a no-brainer for managers to keep close

It’s not enough to just be the team that’s been around forever. 

Our customer relationships still have to stand up to the practical tests of a modern technology function: clear estimates, fast delivery, and being able to adapt to standardisation.

This has been crucial for Energy Market Services Manager, Maggie Keshaboina. 

With deep IT management experience, Maggie has brought a clear operational lens to EMS: keeping services moving, supporting product owners, removing roadblocks, and ensuring efficiency.

She appreciates that our technical familiarity and light structure means we can be highly responsive, commercially sensible, and easy to work with.

For managers responsible for keeping critical services stable while improving how work gets done, that combination matters. It makes YouDo not just a familiar supplier, but a partner that evolves alongside the customer.

“The YouDo team has a detailed understanding of our systems and business context, and they engage closely with us to clarify requirements and support delivery.”

Supporting the energy future with EMS and Transpower

A lot has changed since 2009. Systems and people are adapting to higher complexity, faster innovation, and gnarlier edge cases.

What has stayed consistent across EMS and Transpower is the care people bring to the detail. Nick’s focus on making em6 genuinely useful for electricity industry participants. Ian’s early vision for GMMS to be future-ready. Maggie’s direction for keeping services practical, accountable, and efficient.

As New Zealand’s energy sector demands more from its infrastructure — more flexibility, more responsiveness, more adaptability — having a partner you can solve problems with is a huge advantage.

It’s been a privilege to work alongside the people at EMS and Transpower, and to keep contributing to the systems they rely on.