The Impact of Intelligent Automation in the Energy & Utilities Sector

Harz Energie is a dependable provider of affordable gas, power, and water services to Germans living in the Harz region. But customers often had to be patient waiting for their power to be hooked up when moving to a new home. Employees at Harz Energie had to work through a routine, but complex, set of tasks to get utilities established for each new residence. More than 18,000 requests arrive per year, and each required 12 minutes of staff time to complete.

Read the story below or download the pdf to learn how a Blue Prism intelligent digital workforce helped Harz Energie reduce the time to process each request and improved customer experience.

Introduction

Residents of the scenic Harz region of Germany rely on Harz Energie for affordable gas, power, and water services. The regional utility promotes a customer-centric view on energy needs and offers a broad range of valuable services to 290,000 area residents. When Harz Energie recognized that core business processes were consuming significant staff resources, it brought in a Blue Prism intelligent digital workforce to lend a hand.

Challenge

When Harz-area residents moved to a new home, they wanted to focus on unpacking boxes, not on waiting for their power and water to be hooked up. But customers often had to be patient while Harz Energie worked through the routine and repetitive tasks required to get utilities set up for each new residence. Even though this is a routine request, it is complex and requires accessing multiple systems within the utility. In fact, each move-in request required up to 12 minutes of staff time. And with 18,000 requests per year, it added up.

Solution

Harz Energie wished to enhance both the customer and employee experience, so it turned to partner Natuvion for help deploying a Blue Prism digital workforce. Now instead of employees implementing each step manually, a digital worker takes over.

Customers needing a new utility hook up fill out a form from Harz Energie. Once the form is complete, a digital worker extracts the information and uses it to update the customer information in SAP. When the transaction has been completed, the digital worker creates and sends a welcome letter to the new customer. All work for the move-in request is completed without humans in 90 seconds.

Digital workers also identify cases that need additional support and alert employees who can immediately connect with the customer.

Intelligent automation has saved Harz Energie 2,200 hours in the past year and has added to employee satisfaction. And the utility is so happy with its results that it is now looking to extend the digital workforce into accounting, payment processing and meter reading.