Case Study: EDF – Revenue Completeness Project

Background

EDF Energy is one of the UK’s largest energy companies and a wholly-owned subsidiary of the EDF Group, one of Europe's largest energy groups. They generate around 6 percent of the UK's electricity, employ nearly 12,000 people, and deliver electricity to around 8 million customer homes and businesses through their public networks

In Quarter 4 of 2007, EDF commenced work on an imbalance (Buy Bill Collect) data analysis project. In January 2008, Goodridge Consultancy personnel were brought in to resolve this discrepancy and retrieve the lost revenue.

The challenge

EDF had used complex spread sheets and a wide range of data in order to establish the cause of the imbalance - this method proved extremely challenging, in addition to utilising an enormous amount of resources and time. Unfortunately, EDF could only claim lost revenue from a particular date, due to a cut-off time limit restricting how to far back a claim could be made.

Our solution

Goodridge Consultancy personnel have a proven track record of imbalance identification and resolution. Our team of experts developed a system in order to optimise the resources available and ensure the time-critical accounts were investigated and in turn, properly resolved.

The resulted system was a database that contained information from a number of internal and external systems. By collating the information and running various scripts against the data, the system was able to provide what was essentially a front-end “clue” screen.

These clues provided a picture of possible causes and allowed the user to focus on a particular area. The system was also developed for use as a reporting and tracking tool, identifying “boot necks” in the recovery process, which aided in the building of the end-to-end recovery process.

Our experience in this area was critical in providing a solution to the business. This was implemented by organising a series of workshops in order to establish EDF’s necessary requirements.

These were then formalised into a business requirement specification - driven forward by our team - who wrote and then undertook the testing strategy, implementation, deployment and training of the solution.

Evaluation

The project was delivered on time and within EDF’s budget.

Benefit to the Client

Prior to the system being developed, EDF was recovering, on average, more than quarter of a million pounds per month, but since the implementation, this amount has nearly quadrupled.