For many energy retailers, the pricing model is the heart of the operation. It’s a critical piece of infrastructure that beats at the rhythm of the market. But what happens when that heart is strained? For Gas South, its 17-year-old Excel-based pricing model, while accurate, was buckling under the pressure of growth and inefficiency.

Gas South is one of the largest retail natural gas providers to over 470,000 residential, business and government customers in 14 states spanning across the Southeast, Mid-Atlantic and Midwest. We spoke with Gas South at the beginning of their journey with Gorilla over a year ago, and recently caught up with them to uncover the impacts of their pricing transformation.

Gas South’s old system was reliable in its calculations, but that reliability came at the cost of speed and scalability. At peak times, the system would back up, leaving users waiting significantly longer for calculations to run. This inefficiency was a day-to-day headache, but it also cast a long shadow over the company's future growth ambitions.

The tipping point came when Gas South decided to overhaul its Salesforce environment and move to the Energy and Utilities Cloud. This major internal transformation meant that doing nothing with their existing pricing model simply wasn’t an option. The old system would require a significant overhaul just to keep pace. This prompted a crucial question: "Do we really want to keep what we have? Is that really going to set us up for long-term success?"

This question led them to partner with Gorilla to build a modern, scalable pricing solution. Crucially, Gas South chose a platform already proven across global markets, future‑proofing any plans to expand beyond its current 14‑state footprint.

Building expertise through collaboration

Change of this magnitude is a significant undertaking. For David Maggs, Director of Structuring and Pricing at Gas South, moving away from a legacy system required a partner with deep industry knowledge and a collaborative approach. The implementation process became a two-way street, with Gorilla’s experts learning the intricacies of Gas South’s business while the Gas South team was getting to grips with the Gorilla platform, rather than handing over a black box tool that locks retailers into a vendor’s own UI.

For the team at Gas South, this was crucial. They wanted to become masters of their own domain.

The solution was to build the new models side-by-side. This hands-on approach, with instant feedback and guidance from Gorilla’s team, was "critically important" for developing the in-depth understanding necessary for long-term ownership and success. As Duncan McGregor, Senior Project Manager at Gorilla, noted, this fusion of expertise is a critical success factor. "Your expertise met with our platform expertise, I think, really accelerates the delivery".

Trusting the process (and the experts)

Handing over the keys to a business-critical function like pricing requires a huge amount of trust. This is where industry experience becomes a non-negotiable. Gorilla isn't just a technology company; it's a company born from the energy sector.

With over 150 years of collective energy retail experience in its consultant team alone, Gorilla has lived the same challenges its customers face. This shared understanding builds confidence and dismantles concerns about whether a partner truly comprehends the complexities of the market. While every energy market has its unique quirks, the fundamental challenges are often universal. This global experience allows Gorilla to build a product that meets the needs of retailers not just in Europe, but across the US as well.

Measuring success beyond the numbers

When Gas South began its search for a new pricing tool, the team valued three key things: accuracy, efficiency, and the ability to own and update their own models. The improvement in efficiency was clear and measurable by tracking the time it takes to complete a calculation.

But for David Maggs, the real story wasn't just about what was gained, but also what wasn't sacrificed.

Often, speed is achieved by taking modelling shortcuts and sacrificing accuracy. Gas South did not have to make that compromise. The new solution, powered by Gorilla, delivers the same high degree of accuracy as the legacy tool but in a fraction of the time. Furthermore, the platform's transparency makes it easy to identify bottlenecks, and its architecture allows for rapid scaling of computational resources: a task that would have been a major project in itself with the old system.

Integrating for a seamless user experience

A key part of the project was the integration with Salesforce Energy and Utilities Cloud. For Gas South, this created a "one-stop shop" for their sales users. From a single interface, they can manage customer relationships and, with the press of a button, initiate a pricing request to Gorilla. The platform runs the complex calculations and pushes back a range of configurable options, allowing the sales user to tailor an offer for the customer within predefined boundaries.

This seamless, integrated approach is about enhancing the user experience and empowering the sales team. Sales teams shouldn't have to navigate multiple systems to generate quotes or depend on pricing teams to handle routine tasks for them. Aside from being designed for energy retail, Salesforce and Gorilla handed ownership to the right people, eliminating pointless run-arounds for Sales.

And while Gas South chose Salesforce, Duncan McGregor emphasized that the Gorilla platform is agnostic. Its standard APIs can integrate with any CRM, including Microsoft Dynamics, providing flexibility for retailers regardless of their existing tech stack.

The same headless APIs power any broker portal or CPQ stack—so Gas South avoided the ‘rip‑and‑replace’ trade‑off common with newer all‑in‑one suites

The journey from a 17-year-old spreadsheet to a modern, integrated pricing engine was a significant one for Gas South. It was a large, complex project with parallel streams of work, but it was never insurmountable.

By prioritizing collaboration, trusting in deep industry expertise, and focusing on a holistic view of success, Gas South has built a foundation for future growth and innovation.