Blue Prism Cloud deploys AI capabilities at Utilita, a leading UK energy provider - Spotlight: Customer Case Study - Resources
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Spotlight: Customer Case Study
Blue Prism Cloud deploys
AI capabilities at Utilita,
a leading UK energy provider
cloud.blueprism.com
Utilita is one of Britain’s leading suppliers of Smart Pay As You Go Energy. The company
was established in 2003 with a vision of helping those households who were being badly
served and overcharged by the Big Six – primarily the prepay market. Using its smart meter
technology, Utilita puts customers in control of their energy usage and spend and estimates
it has saved Britain’s hard-pressed households more than £500m since 2010. The company
serves approximately 800,000 customers, managing around 1.3million meters.
Goals
Technology innovation is essential to thriving in
the intensely competitive energy market. In the first
nine months of 2019 alone, six energy providers
went out of business, having failed to be able to
create a business capable of operating at profit
within the limits of heavy regulatory obligations
regarding price and customer service levels.
One of the hurdles Utilita looked to overcome
with the help of automation, was the fact that the
vast majority of core business processes need to
access and manipulate data held in a wide variety
of applications, approximately 90% of which have
been designed and built in-house.
The energy industry has a specifically intricate
systems environment as it brings together so many
different third parties in order to serve customers.
Blue Prism Cloud | Utilita 2
Recently Utilita achieved “One to Watch”
status in the highly respected Sunday Times
100 UK Best Companies to work for.
Utilita actively embarked on building a long-
The company serves
term Intelligent Automation strategy as part of
an overall IT Transformation strategy that moves approximately 800,000
technology from being a support service into customers, managing
being the heart of the company’s ability to create
long term sustainable differentiation within the
around 1.3million meters.
marketplace. Specifically, automation is driving
momentum behind increasing levels of business
efficiencies that in turn allow it to provide
outstanding customer service. Energy firms have a duty of care to customers
and cannot put them at risk by leaving them
For example, installing a new meter can involve without power. In 2018, the company was
up to eight different organizations, including those proud to be ranked in the Top 5 of UK Energy
who validate customer data, meter providers who Suppliers for Customer Satisfaction by consumer
manufacture and rent out the physical equipment, organization, Which?.
as well as meter operators who carry out the
installation. In addition, connections have to be This reputation not only needs to be protected
made to the core grid back-end systems, and front- but act as a foundation for continued expansion
end facing billing systems. within the consumer market.
Against this backdrop, it was essential that the In order to remain agile in the rollout of the IA
RPA solution Utilita deployed could work easily strategy, Utilita also wanted to make sure that
across all systems and get started immediately. the automation solution it adopted would allow
Importantly, the team was thinking ahead it to focus on rapid value creation and not burden
strategically and looking for a solution that in the project with excessive IT infrastructure
addition to executing more prescriptive repetitive complexity and cost. Ease of use was a critical
back office tasks with RPA, could incorporate AI requirement and the strategy clearly set out to
capabilities and extend to impacting customer transfer knowledge and skills to the in-house
service directly. team. This focus on internal skills development
in a cutting-edge technology area also supports
As with all energy providers, the organization the firm’s pride in being recognized as a great
places a high priority on being compliant with place to work. Recently the company achieved
strict regulation governing transparency and “One to Watch” status in the highly respected
responsiveness to its customers. Sunday Times 100 UK Best Companies to work for.
Blue Prism Cloud | Utilita 3
Securing Value Following on from this success, the automation
team focused on automating a range of Field
WAVE 1 - INCRE ASING BUSINESS Services processes including scheduling
EFFICIENCY appointments for field engineers to perform
The initial phase of the project focused on installs and meter checks. Costly visits to
reducing the manual effort involved in highly commercial sites that were not yet connected
routine tasks. Repetitive processes that contribute to the company’s energy supply were eliminated,
to the bottom line were targeted first with the and automating schedules allowed excess
added benefit that by removing these tasks from engineer availability to be put to effective use.
the human team’s workload, Utilita could improve
the quality of day-to-day work experience. A dedicated automation team now employs 5
Early success was achieved by automating the people who have put more than 24 processes into
ordering of new pre-payment top-up cards. production within a year. Not only has it freed
Previously the Revenue team carried out the up time, but the Digital Workers have automated
process manually: checking various data systems, activities that were not previously being executed,
they would validate information before sending thereby helping the organization avoid hiring an
an email to the card processing company additional 34 people. Approximately 2000 queries
detailing the payment request. Digital Workers are handled each week by the Digital Workers.
now execute all the required steps allowing the These cross a wide range of topics from change
Revenue team to win back time and focus on of tenancy through to payment detail changes.
more rewarding activities.
Blue Prism Cloud | Utilita 4
One example is the use of Digital Workers to Bad debt pools put companies at risk and one
top up pre-payment cards via self-serve portals. way to protect against this is to move people from
On Monday mornings the contact centre team credit to pre-pay agreements where necessary.
frequently experience a huge However, the transfer between the two
rise in volumes from people comprises many steps and involves a
who have run out of funds on full programme of communications to
their cards and require a top the customers in order ensure they are
up card or number. Supplies aware and prepared for the change.
are kept live over weekends to Pre-pay cards need to be issued,
ensure customers have access mailed out physically and activated
to critical services but come for use. Lastly, instructions on the
Monday morning, customers meter also need to be changed and
would need to take action on the appropriate connections made to
their account. the accounts systems. Only once all
preparations are confirmed complete
Previously, it could take as can the final switching be live.
many as 50 minutes for
customers to confirm their The entire process takes place over
top up number over the phone several weeks and is now being
where it now happens within a managed by Digital Workers who not
couple of minutes. In addition, the immediacy only ensure that all steps are followed accurately,
of the automated process eliminates a large portion but that these are recorded and available for
of calls that are placed. On a monthly average, auditing. To date £6.4million of debt has
it would complete over 1,100 requests providing been cleared by implementing this
better customer service. change efficiently with customers
who were falling back on their
In order to be able to afford to offer customers a payments.
great deal on tariffs, it’s important that Utilita is
able to collect payments from customers efficiently.
Blue Prism Cloud | Utilita 5
Securing Value
WAVE 2 -
IMPROVING BUSINESS PERFORMANCE £6.4 million of debt has been
Thousands of disparate customer requests come cleared by implementing
into the company each day by email to a shared
mailbox, as well as through a web portal which change of account type to
collects information and then sends data onto the pre-pay using Digital Workers.
shared mailbox. The requests contained can range
from needing to change account payment details
to rescheduling engineer visits or cancelling a As the customer base continues to increase,
service. The only way for these communications Utilita wants to find a more efficient way to manage
to be directed to the appropriate team and for the requests. Through automation it will be able
the required actions to be taken, is for someone to speed up responsiveness to incoming customer
to read and manually process each item. The free queries. In parallel, this will ensure Utilita fulfils
form nature of the messages has made it regulatory requirements to respond to customer
impossible previously to automate the requests. requests in a timely manner.
Blue Prism Cloud | Utilita 6
Quite rightly, the customer relations team wants Language Understanding and Sentiment Analysis
to focus its time on resolving customer queries in order to determine the contents. The Digital
rather than spending time on copying, logging and Workers then apply waterfall logic to the message
placing queries into ticketing systems. Manually in order to direct it to the right team. The benefit
this process has taken up to 10 days, especially of the process is the reduction of a backlog from
when further exchanges are needed to fill out potentially attaching a day late, it would attach
incomplete information about the account holder. on the same day giving agents the opportunity to
respond to the e-mails faster.
In another part of the contact
centre, Digital Workers are
being employed alongside
contact centre agents to speed
up logging change of tenancy
details so that customers are
not billed mistakenly after
having left a property. Contact
center agents taking incoming
customer calls enter all the
basic details into a web portal,
after which Digital Workers
take on responsibility for
Digital Workers are now beginning to influence the entering the data into a variety of different billing
process in an ambitious programme to automate and CRM systems. Around 50% of the process
the triage process leveraging a number of AI is now automated allowing the agents more time
skills. The first step in the programme involves to speak with customers and take the opportunity
using Digital Workers to pick up emails from to discuss other services.
seven different mailboxes and use an app called
Sperry in order to transfer the incoming message
into a pdf. On average this process handles 12,500
On average the process
emails per month, with the process expectant of
growth where it has already increased an inbox handled 12,500 emails
since it was initialised. More challenging however per month.
is the second step in which Digital Workers are
being trained to read the mail and use Natural
Blue Prism Cloud | Utilita 7
Increasing business agility
Energy regulator, Ofgem’s SolR (supplier of last In addition to being much harder to execute a
resort) process protects continuity of supply for manual strategy, it would have dented the financial
customers of energy companies that have ceased business case for taking on the new business.
to trade by awarding competitor energy companies
the rights to supply the impacted customer Speed of switching from one supplier to another
base. One of the conditions of the transfer of the is an important consideration for prospective
customer portfolio is that the provider must enrol customers. Energy providers intent on growing
affected customers within a matter of days. Agility their customer base need to compete aggressively
of systems is critical to being able to execute on on being able to fulfil customer demand for
this potential for increasing market share. a simpler, fast switching process. In addition,
Ofgem’s faster switching programme currently
In February 2019, Utilita onboarded approximately aims to introduce a 21-day maximum after which
31,000 customers from the failed Scottish provider, providers face penalties. Even tighter timelines are
Our Power, and in September 2019, a further 29,000 to follow, with 7-day and even next day switching
were acquired from Manchester-based Ever smart. being envisaged by the industry. Utilita’s growing
In both instances the use of Digital Workers to family of Digital Workers play a pivotal role in
support the verification of details and set up of allowing the company to constantly adapt to these
new accounts within a whole new range of CRM new requirements.
and billing systems was critical to being able to
complete the acquisition efficiently. The alternative Similarly, the introduction of a new meter
would have been to tackle the challenge by hiring standard, SMETS 2 (Smart meter equipment
a large number of temporary staff at high cost technical specification), threatens to create further
and training them from scratch. disruption to energy company operations.
Blue Prism Cloud | Utilita 8
directly from the Business Operations team. As the
programme gathers pace and scales it has now been
folded into IT Development. Responsibility for the
next wave of the programme has been passed onto
Glyn Turk, Head of IT Development, who explains
the benefit of the change: “By placing the Automation
team into IT development, we are making sure that
the automation team have access to a wider range
of tools, resources and programming expertise.
This in turn helps them integrate automations more
Pre-payment functionality of these new meters is fully with the bespoke software stack Utilita has
limited, where the data requires heavy manipulation developed in-house.”
for it to become utilised. Instead of carrying this out
manually, Digital Workers have been tasked to validate, “The move also means that automation is considered
collect and transfer the necessary data from a portal. as a viable option for a greater number of change
Collection and transfer of the data saves the team on requests and projects that are raised with IT from the
average 12-14 hours per week, saving time for the full spectrum of the business. It becomes an important
team and effort. way in which to ensure swift and effective response
to our internal stakeholders.”
Establishing an Automation
The evolution of the programme brings the capabilities
OPER ATING MODEL of the automation platform into the heart of a wider
The key goal behind the setup of the automation IT transformation and connects it to investments
initiative was to support the company’s transformation in AI and next generation architecture of systems.
programme and increase Utilita’s agility. In order Rather than being seen as a standalone technology,
to establish a strong connection with the business it becomes integral to the design of key initiatives
and stay focused on driving business outcomes, the such as enabling and promoting customer self-service
Automation Centre of Excellence was initially led through mobile apps and online platforms.
Blue Prism Cloud | Utilita 9
Each member of the 5-strong central automation
team is now working on anaverage of 3 new
automations at any time, including a mix of longer,
more complex processes and a couple of simpler,
fast turnaround processes.
A large part of Utilita’s success in delivering
tangible benefits from automation has been the
team’s flexible approach to deployment. In their
view it is important not to apply automation to
solving operational issues in a rigid, singular
fashion. As Ian Burgess, Director of Information
Technology at Utilita explains:
“Be selective and distinguish between the needs
of different processes and scenarios.
• Where a longer-term change to systems is
planned, automation can be deployed on a
temporary basis to bridge the gap between final “ By placing the Automation team into
development and current systems inefficiencies IT development, we are making sure
to deliver fast improvements. that the automation team have access
• As new processes and complimentary to a wider range of tools, resources and
technologies are rolled out, automation can be programming expertise. This in turn
baked into the overall design to maximise the helps them integrate automations more
effectiveness of the total investment and create fully with the bespoke software stack
an otherwise unachievable outcome. Utilita has developed in-house.”
• Where process redesign itself eliminates much
– GLEN TURK,
of the underlying complexity, you may find no Head Of IT Development,
automation is needed. “ Utilita
Blue Prism Cloud | Utilita 10Deepening ties with business
Beyond IT, Utilita is also looking to establish a new business framework that will
further spread benefit across the organization. The plan involves creating a framework
in which a wider number of people in the business can create simpler automations
while the CoE (Centre of Excellence) expert group focus their skills on more complex,
high impact processes that than maximise returns.
A training programme is now underway with one capabilities is expected to change the way
business function at a time being invited to join employees think about automation and encourage
two-to-three hour training sessions. Following the people to actively consider how it could help
introductory course, members of the Automation improve operations in their area.
CoE team up with their colleagues in a buddy
system to help them set up their first Digital More complex internal processes are also coming
Worker task. Once the business users are up and into scope for the automation team in order to help
running however, no support will be needed other drive benefits to staff directly. For example, routine
than the review and approval of automations employment reference requests no longer take up
before they are put into production. time for the HR team. As a next step they are also
looking forward to introducing a new automated
A critical factor in enabling Utilita to follow onboarding process in which Digital Workers will
this federated approach is the simplicity and action setting up email addresses, payment details,
accessibility of the Blue Prism Cloud platform. and access to systems for new employees while the
This wider familiarity with the IA platform’s HR team focus on the human aspects of welcoming
new colleagues into the business.
About Blue Prism
As the pioneer in Robotic Process Automation (RPA), Blue Prism is the trusted, secure intelligent automation choice
for the Fortune 500 and public sector. Today, Blue Prism’s connected-RPA Platform joins operational leaders with
accessible, advanced cognitive technologies to strengthen the capabilities of the new 21st century workforce.
Available both on-premise and in the cloud as an IaaS or SaaS deployment, Blue Prism empowers your people to
focus on more creative and meaningful work.
Visit www.blueprism.com
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