EKZ is using the power of data to power homes and their customer relationships.

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From cooling our homes to heating our ovens (and lighting our televisions for a favorite program), our daily lives rely on energy. And providing a high availability supply to customers is the mission of EKZ (Elektrizitätswerke des Kantons Zürich, a cantonal power company), with subsidiary EKZ Eltop responsible for implementing several key, tailor-made energy solutions.

"Of the 1,400 employees at EKZ, 500 are part of Eltop," said Ivo Caduff, New Technology Engineer at EKZ. "Our specialist groups install things like e-mobility charging infrastructure, heat pumps, and solar panels."

Rising energy costs and recently enacted green energy legislation were driving a change in customer needs and expectations. EKZ needed to respond quickly - and that meant taking a new approach.

Digitalization is key to being able to keep pace with the increased speed of change.

Ivo Caduff

New Technology Engineer, EKZ Elektrizitätswerke des Kantons Zürich

1. Industry changes and sustainable energy shape EKZ's approach to transformation.

With a shifting energy landscape and quickly growing demand for their services, digital transformation became EKZ's focus.

"We wanted to use our data to drive efficiency from start to finish," explained Caduff. "Our teams are very busy with installation. We needed to become more efficient with our resources and also better at managing customer relationships."

The team had three objectives:

Improve customer satisfaction with a more holistic experience
Improve internal efficiency and reduce administrative processes
Improve data quality

"We offer a turnkey service. From installation to grid connection to maintenance, we manage the entire process," shared Caduff. A process that was being managed with spreadsheets and no connected system, leading to a lack of data consistency. Additionally, many in the team were not digital natives. "Anything we built needed to be something that they would actually use. Team buy-in was essential."

Data privacy and hosting within Europe were also priorities. "We previously hosted everything on-site but wanted a solution that was better able to scale quickly," said Caduff. "We want to focus on what we do best, where we can differentiate ourselves as a power company. In this case, that's installing solar energy infrastructure, not maintaining IT architecture for our applications."

The team explored options. "And we saw that the cloud was the best way for us to do this," Caduff concluded.

2. EKZ powers their customer-first strategy on the cloud.

The EKZ Eltop team launched a sales and CRM platform to integrate their processes end-to-end.

"We deployed an interconnected system that facilitates everyday business, from administrative teams to project managers on their way to installing green energy in customer homes. It's actually pretty cool how it all comes together," said Caduff.

Here's how it works.

"It starts when someone visits our website for information about solar energy. They enter some personal details and receive a quote within minutes including both estimated cost and images of how their house will look with solar panels," Caduff explained. This creates a lead in Sales Cloud so the sales team can contact them and schedule an appointment as a next step.

"A sales team member meets with the customer at their home and gathers all necessary data, like technical information, pictures and measurements," continued Caduff. This data is then validated via an app that automatically updates the opportunity record, providing a complete customer profile.

"The system is automated and designed to help maintain the highest level of data quality so that we can provide the highest level of customer service possible," Caduff added.

Once installation is complete, the customer submits any service requests through their customer portal on the EKZ website where a case is created in Service Cloud and assigned to the EKZ support team. "The great benefit of having an integrated system is that the service team has immediate access to the customer's situation. They know exactly what is installed because we already have all the information from the sales process," said Caduff.

3. Data is the "joule" in the crown of EKZ's transformation.

The platform was deployed in three months and has already helped EKZ to exceed their planned activity, helping them to better centralize knowledge and plan resourcing needs. "Our goal was to identify 1,000 opportunities in one year, and we were able to identify 800 within the last six months. These are great results," said Caduff.

The platform has also been enthusiastically received across the business. "Once everyone understood what we are trying to do, how the tool works and the possibilities it affords, we saw very high levels of engagement," said Caduff. Key to this was their bottom-up approach, including teams in the build right from the start. "The business is now not only willing to adapt their processes to the new system, but they're even proposing ideas."

And with more confidence in their data, EKZ is using it to better inform their decisions - and further transformation. "We started with solar, and now we're moving deeper into our e-mobility services. We're creating more measurable results," Caduff explained.

It's also helping EKZ provide a more targeted customer experience. "Previously, we sometimes had an incomplete picture of what customers had purchased. Now when the customer contacts us, they have a personalized sales interaction because the data's all there."

Caduff thinks that digital transformation is a central part of enabling scalable processes in the energy industry. "Traditionally we've seen change over decades-, or even centuries-long, timelines. It's moving faster now, and digitalization is key to being able to keep pace with the increased speed of change."

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2. EKZ powers their customer-first strategy on the cloud.

The EKZ Eltop team launched a sales and CRM platform to integrate their processes end-to-end.

Here's how it works.

"The system is automated and designed to help maintain the highest level of data quality so that we can provide the highest level of customer service possible," Caduff added.