Process Mining at Energy Suppliers

Energy suppliers today are faced with an unmanageable number of internal company processes that are handled on a daily basis via their IT systems and whose complexity is constantly increasing.

This applies to billing, market communication and customer service as well as the entire supply chain, such as smart grids or sustainability management.

Ineffective processes cost time and money. Process costs increase, the quality of products and service decreases and, in the worst case scenario, customers become dissatisfied and switch providers.

To avoid this, energy suppliers can use process mining to analyze their IT-supported processes and thus create the necessary transparency for optimization.

In the beginning was the revision

Process mining was initially used by large corporations as part of their auditing process to compare target and actual processes and thus ensure that compliance regulations are adhered to.

Medium-sized and smaller IT departments are now increasingly turning to process mining to determine how their IT-supported processes are being implemented in the company.

However, process mining offers the greatest added value in the individual specialist departments.

"Today, process mining is used in all kinds of business areas, from auditing and accounting to supply chain management and customer service"

explains Bastian Nominacher, Managing Director of Celonis.

Celonis offers companies a server-supported process mining tool. For Nominacher, process mining is a fundamental technology for companies that enables them to speed up processes, reduce costs and increase quality.

Process mining goes beyond traditional analysis methods such as SPSS, because instead of statistics, process relationships are clarified here.

Process mining can be used to analyze all processes, from core processes, which for energy companies include customer service and market communication, to support processes such as purchasing.

The data sources available in the company (ERP, IS-U, Common Layer, CRM) are used for this visualization. Every process that runs via an IT system leaves a digital trail, for example through documents that are created or changed during the process or through emails that are triggered from the CRM system.

Process mining depicts long-running processes and process loops, such as the frequency and causes of so-called rework activities, i.e. when orders have to be processed frequently because the invoice value has changed or customers have to be contacted several times for another reason.

Changing provider must be quick

The following process provides an example of this: a customer wants to switch energy supplier. After initial contact with the customer by the sales force, their contract details are received and their creditworthiness is checked.

At the same time, the start of delivery is prepared and contact is made with the customer. This everyday process alone generates huge amounts of data.

From the initial contact with the sales force to the collection of the supply, all important steps are handled in the energy supplier's CRM system. But it doesn't stop at an IT system, because the new energy supplier uses market communication to terminate the customer's contract with the previous energy company.

However, if the previous energy supplier objects to the termination, the entire process of switching supplier comes to a standstill. There are so-called follow-up contacts between the two companies, between the specialist departments involved and with the customer to clarify the reasons for the rejection of the termination.

The more complex the process is and the more IT systems are involved, the less transparent it becomes and the more difficult it is to analyze the causes.

The additional process effort increases and costs are incurred before the energy supplier has even earned a euro from the new customer.

This is just one example of a single process, but it is of central importance due to the large number of customers that every energy company supplies, especially as every new customer wants to be supplied as quickly as possible.

Due to the enormous number of customers, the energy supplier is faced with an extremely large number of heterogeneous inquiries that it has to answer. Within this process, the energy supplier is caught between the conflicting priorities of efficient processing and the need to provide customers with the best possible individual support so that they remain satisfied.

This is why the process flows and system landscapes of energy suppliers are characterized by a high level of complexity, particularly in customer service. The relevance of a high degree of automation, which generates large volumes of data, is correspondingly high.

Process Mining filters out the relevant information from this volume of data by bringing together and visualizing all process traces from IT in real time.

The level of detail of the process structure can be selected interactively, from a simple core structure to 100% visualization of the entire process, in which all process variants are displayed.

Utilizing the potential of process data

"Many companies mistakenly believe that they don't even have this kind of process data"

Nominacher explains.

However, increasing digitalization and automation mean that companies are generating vast amounts of data that process mining experts use for process visualization.

"It doesn't matter whether the data is in SAP or in other systems"

continued the Celonis boss.

Nominacher is certain: "Many companies can do much more with their data.