The company’s board of directors mandated and authorized investment in standardization and automation, including Robotic Process Automation (RPA), Workflow and Artificial Intelligence (AI), to:
• Streamline end-to-end business processes
• Accelerate customer growth & improve margin
• Reduce schedule & dispatch cycle time and rework
• Increase capacity to expand renewable-energy business
Solution: Over the course of 12 months, The Lab standardized work activities and implemented 40 bots in:
• Customer Billing
• Scheduling & Dispatch
• Compliance
• Capital Reporting
• Vegetation Management
• Supply Management & Procurement
• Payroll
• IT
The company had built its own automation team, but the board struggled to see the promised gains in operational efficiency or customer-experience benefits. They needed help generating:
• Valuable automation use cases
– Documented
– Quantified
– Prioritized
• An automation “road map” for their internal team
Solution: In just eight weeks, The Lab completed an enterprise-wide Discovery Project that:
• Mapped 10+ major, end-to-end business processes
• Evaluated more than 1,700 work activities
• Detailed a “shopping list” of 125+ automation use cases
With the company’s increased focus on renewable-energy delivery, the COO needed to scale up green-energy-program enrollments. But the customer service team’s backlog of applications continued to grow, due to
• Accessing the customer’s existing account
• Validating that the account is not delinquent
• Confirming availability of the green-energy plan by zip code
• Disabling existing plan and enrolling customer into green-energy program
Solution: The Lab implemented two bots in just six weeks to automate:
• More than 95 percent of green-energy-program enrollments
• Flawless data transfer between disconnected systems
The Lab’s client had recently replaced a decade-old customer information system (CIS). Lack of proper training and ineffective process redesign caused increasing frustration and stress: a quarter of their customer service staff had left as part of the “Great Resignation.”
Solution: In just 12 weeks, with six bots, The Lab automated various aspects of customer transaction processing including:
• Customer bill payment processing
• Address changes
• Complaint handling and assignment
• Automated customer survey delivery
and aggregation
The company’s executive leadership knew they needed to automate, but weren’t sure where to begin. The CIO needed a low-risk way to:
• Rapidly implement RPA bots
• Build company-wide momentum
• Jump start internal automation efforts
Solution: The Lab deployed a low-risk RPA Six-pack™ of bots across different departments to generate a groundswell of support:
• Bill Payment Processing
• Billing & Collections Reporting
• Payroll Entry Verification
• IT System New Hire Onboarding
• Crew Availability Confirmation
• Invoice Processing
The utilities provider wasn’t sure if it was possible, but they wanted to automate work activities in their planned maintenance scheduling process, e.g.,
• Resource availability and work order reviews
• Work order QC
• Field notification and route assignment
Solution: In just ten days, The Lab performed an Automation Feasibility Assessment™ that:
• Recorded the client performing these tasks (via Zoom)
• Determined how the activities could be automated
• Documented future-state use case, ready for implementation
The Lab has helped utilities clients at all stages of automation maturity. Whether you are deploying your first three or four RPA bots for a proof-of-concept, or seeking to discover all of the automation candidates in your operations, The Lab can accelerate your realization of bottom-line benefits.
Utilities with 125 employees are much different from those with 5,000 employees. Similarly, utilities with revenue of $50 million face challenges different from those of a $5 billion revenue utilities provider. We’ve worked with utilities companies of all sizes and know the likely snags.
Client Size: Employees
· 100-500 employees · 2,000-10,000 employees
· 500-2,000 employees · 10,000+ employees
Client Size: Revenue
· $50 to $250 million · $1 billion to $10 billion
· $250m to $1 billion · $10 billion to $40 billion
The Lab remotely works from our Houston headquarters to map your entire organization’s business processes, analyze your existing system data, and deliver prioritized shopping lists of these available automations to you.
By engaging The Lab for a discovery initiative, you can expect 120+ automation candidates, 100+ process improvement and standardization opportunities, 75+ analytics and AI use cases to be discovered, quantified, and prioritized for your company in about eight weeks. We can then implement as many or as few as you need.
The Lab not only works for you to discover automation opportunities within your utilities operations but we also have our own full-service RPA development and implementation team. Everything is U.S.-based from our offices in Houston; nothing is outsourced or offshored, ever.
The best way to appreciate the power of The Lab’s automation service offerings is to see for yourself. We invite you to book your free, no-obligation screen-sharing demo. In just 30 minutes, we’ll show you how we’ve helped to transform other utilities companies just like yours. You’ll see real utilities bots in action. And get all your questions answered by our friendly experts.
Call (201) 526-1200 or email info@thelabconsulting.com to book your free demo today!
