Energy Broker
Energy Broker streamlines contract management by using RPA and reduces cost to serve
Overview
The client is a provider of innovative Utility Solutions and has been established for close to two decades. They are spread across New Zealand and assist numerous clients to procure energy amongst other services. The process of procuring energy is reliant on multiple stakeholders and multiple data sources and accuracy is quintessential in making a recommendation to the end user.
The Energy sector although highly regulated in NZ has more than 29 Network companies and over 30 Energy retailers, there is ample choice for the end user. Large data sets are involved with a single user having the potential to generate more than 17000 data points in energy consumption alone foregoing price and other variables. The manual movement of data is time consuming and can be mundane.
Applications Engaged
- Salesforce
- Outlook
- Microsoft Excel
- MS SQL
- Ui Path
- SharePoint
# Opportunity
The process to procure Energy was highly effective as it produced the desired output, but detailed analysis depicted a lack of efficiency which meant over processing information to get the required outcome. As the business had multiple services the energy procurement process was selected based on analysis and in discussion with stakeholders. Broca had to streamline the process and ensure the following:
- Standardise opportunity creation in the CRM (Salesforce)
- Ensure automated creation of contracts across the CRM and manage customer documents
- Reduce time spent to extract information from external sources and automate data input into CRM
- Create sub elements of a contract which could range from one to 100+
- Increase the health of the process to allow for scalability and integration into other processes
- Create data repository for customer insights
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- Manual and repetitive process
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- Processe with standard readable electronic input
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- Rule based
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- Data collating / searching
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- High volume
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- Write to database / CRM
# Challenge
The end to end process of engaging a customer to understand requirements, request information from incumbent retailer and engage with potential retailers to make a recommendation involves work across multiple applications with different stakeholders involved. The number of retailers and networks in NZ exacerbates this task and can create a bottleneck when detailed analysis is required. The integration had to work seamlessly across multiple applications like Salesforce, Outlook, Excel, Webpages and SharePoint while being hosted on a Virtual Machine.
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- Reduce Processing Time
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- Multiple application
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- The existing process
# Solution
The process was studied in detail to analyse for effectiveness and efficiency, ROI was calculated to gauge feasibility of RPA. The process was redesigned to accommodate requests from multiple stakeholders and to ensure the UiPath BOTS could execute the process flawlessly. Templates in MS Excel and MS Outlook to capture information was standardised, Salesforce flow was redesigned to include accountability and capture additional information. The attended BOT was differentiated into multiple stages to allow for checks reliant on an external process and finally data received was structured and stored for later access and to build insights.
# Benefits
Eliminated defects
There was huge volume of data to be processed and more than often copy pasting large data sets can lead to inaccuracy, the BOT eliminated this by performing rule bases repetitive work in minutes.
Reduced waiting times
Large data sets involved macro enabled excel with potentially higher volumes slowing the process, the identification of errors at a later stage in the process also delayed time to action. The Streamlined process managed data across excel and SQL and as the input parameters were pre-defined errors were picked up and notified to personnel thus improving the overall speed of the process.
Increased resource potential
Employees were free from the burden of copy pasting data sets and searching for information. This enabled the employees to focus on higher value activities of cross selling of doing a deep dive analysis on cost analysis thus increasing the value offered to the customer.
Avoided transportation
Moving files from one application to another can seem like an easy task and may take seconds to perform but cumulated to an entire year and the time adds up. The BOT was enabled to create and store further automating movement of files across applications.
Reduced extra processing time
One must be vigilant when handling utility data across different meter types, regions and other variables to ensure the output is standardised, this could involve multiple tweaks to ensure the desired output is reached. The BOT was able to identify data sets based on parameters inputted and could highlight erroneous data thus avoiding data processing and informing personnel accordingly. The new streamlined process was effective and efficient.
Reduced cost to serve
The time taken to process information was significant and resources could not be deployed to other activities in the business. Automating the process enabled the staff to be deployed to othervalue adding activities thus reducing the overall cost of the process and creating opportunities in other areas.
Improved user experience
Churning data constantly can be tedious and can confine the user to a mundane but important activity in the process, there leaves little room for the user to think outside the box as accuracy with data is paramount. The BOT took care of these mundane tasks while eliminating the pain points of the user and overall improved employee engagement.
ROI Achieved
10
months
Improved
Accuracy
98%
Improved
Processing Time
95%
