Business Impact Summary
"The Ventyx Service Suite mobile workforce management solution continues to evolve to meet our needs and has provided us with a scalable flexibility to support and optimize our most critical field operations."
CATHARINE NORÉN
HEAD OF PLANNING
DONG ENERGY
The merger of six Danish energy companies to form DONG Energy faced a number of significant operational challenges. Unifying the disparate field organizations, which service more than 1 million customers, was a key element. Using the Ventyx Service Suite mobile workforce management (MWFM) solution, Denmark's leading energy group has not only overcome this challenge but also has optimized assignment and dispatching and streamlined business processes. The impact of these changes was immediate: one year after implementation, DONG Energy recaptured 100 percent of the initial MWFM investment costs and exceeded the projected first-year operational savings goal.
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The Challenge
The needs of the newly merged DONG Energy were clear. In order to fully realize the workforce synergies potential of the merger, the utility needed to distribute field operations work across organizational and geographic boundaries. The tools and processes chosen to support this goal would need to drive performance optimization, internal controls improvement and cost reduction.
DONG Energy quickly determined its field operations' needs were best met by a single enterprise solution that would manage work across much of the targeted enterprise—regardless of the enterprise application from which the work was generated—and enable seamless, real-time data and communications flow between enterprise systems and mobile workers.
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The Solution
The company chose to upgrade from its legacy Ventyx MWFM software—at the time used by one of the merging companies—to the latest version of Service Suite. The Service Suite release provided powerful enhancements to scheduling and dispatch capabilities, broader mobile support and enhanced business intelligence, helping the utility realize significant benefits—across its field operations. The expanded Service Suite solution provided the base to support the development and adoption of utility-wide process standardization, increased field force productivity and lower support costs.
One year after the merged energy group was founded, the MWFM upgrade and expansion project started. The project ran concurrently with an SAP implementation and the two applications were integrated. The new mobile workforce management solution, code-named MOTOR, went live on September 2008 with expectations of immediate operational savings and recovery of the initial investment costs. Service Suite delivered on both counts.
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The Result
DONG Energy's Meter Operations and Power Supply organizations in particular experienced the greatest gains. They took a stepped approach to move from an all-manual environment in 2008 to fully automated dispatch of all routine service messages by 2012. With Service Suite handling the routine planning of technician itineraries, there is now a ratio of 1 dispatcher for every 28 field crews (compared to 1 dispatcher for every 15 field crews in 2007), so dispatchers are able to focus on exceptions, special cases, and monitoring assets involved with open orders.
With real-time enterprise-wide access to the entire field force, dispatchers gained the flexibility to modify assignments for crews and adjust the schedule as jeopardy situations or other conditions required. "Having a combination of detailed and enterprise-wide controls enabled a huge productivity shift in how our dispatchers managed order progress and the status of the fleet," said Stephan Fly, senior process consultant at DONG Energy. "All projects have their unique challenges; once the Service Suite team helped us work through these, the impact was significant. Service Suite was a major contributor in driving cost savings."
Dispatchers were not the only ones to yield benefits from the upgrade. Field technicians were initially resistant to the system changes, with concerns of job obsolescence. However, once technicians started using the new screens and forms, they embraced the cultural shift. The ability to create and complete work orders on site resulted in a greater sense of ownership of the work orders and avoided additional truck rolls.
Realizing Value and Identifying Benefits
DONG Energy has realized higher-than-expected returns and continues to log yearly savings since the upgrade. The organization achieved its objectives through a multi-pronged approach, supporting positive cultural changes with the Ventyx enterprise software solution and optimized business processes. A full 85% of the efficiencies and performance improvements were attributed to the Service Suite solution, ensuring the investments in place today help build the workforce operation of tomorrow.
One year after implementation, 100% of the initial investment for the Service Suite upgrade was recovered. The first year also exceeded the projected savings, realizing actual cost savings of more than 10 million Danish Krone (approximately 1.4 million Euros).
Significant productivity gains since the upgrade include:
- 15% - 36% more jobs completed per technician
- Up to 18% reduction in order duration
- 50% reduction of active dispatchers in Meter Operations
- Increased ratio of 1 dispatcher for every 28 technicians
Important non-tangible yields that continue to benefit the Meter Operations and Power Supply organizations at DONG Energy are:
A modernized system that enables the capture of accurate field data and reduces errors
Automation of major functions that project an enhanced overview of daily production
A major contributor to positive cultural change in the field workforce organizations
What's Next?
Two years after the first upgrade, DONG Energy is currently refreshing their MWFM solution through a second upgrade on track to go live in May 2011. For this release, they have identified several areas of benefits, featuring:
- Continuous scheduling optimization, which continually and automatically optimizes the schedule throughout the day
- Enhancements that further optimize travel time
- Accurate GPS tracking of meters, expected to greatly decrease job duration
- Integration of GPS in mobile devices in Meter operations to track and optimize vehicle and technician productivity
- Attachment of GIS schematic files within the Service Suite application
Renewable energy is another key area of growth for DONG Energy. With more than 20% of their energy sourced from wind power drawn from the North Sea, Ventyx solutions are currently being evaluated for a possible extension to ensure asset health and reliability in the renewable business.
"Every feature added aims to drive efficiency and productivity gains. The Service Suite mobile workforce management solution continues to evolve to meet our needs and has provided us with a scalable flexibility to support and optimize our most critical field operations," added Catharine Norén, Head of Planning at DONG Energy.
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