Celosphere 2022: Equans process improvements 30% reduction in throughput time

Equans, a global utilities service management company that operates in 17 countries, reduced its service throughput time by 30% and processed 10,000 fewer service orders per month by improving its operational and contract management processes with Celonis.

Speaking at Celosphere 2022, Henk Bergsma, Business Consultant and Process Expert at Equans, outlined a Celonis project focused on its Netherland operations, which has 5,500 employees. Equans expertise ranges from heating and cooling infrastructure to EV charging and renewable solutions to lighting and facility management.

Bergsma said Equans' challenge was too many standing service orders. Equans' goal was to eliminate process friction so it can focus on sustainability and moving toward a zero carbon future.

Here's a look at the Equans service process that spanned operations management and contract management: ● Service request, say a customer calling about a defect in a heating system. ● Service request is then registered and service order is created. ● Technician solves problems. ● Invoice created. ● Service order closed and invoicing completed.

That process was run through a services team that included 2,000 people, more than 4,600 service contacts and 26,000 new service transactions per month.

Bergsma said Equans moved to EMS Cloud in 2019 and has 44 users on the service. Equans is using Celonis EMS to ingest data from Planon (operations) and SAP (finance) to reduce throughput time by 20 days to 30 days.

In addition, Equans formed a Celonis Center of Excellence (CoE) with a focus on operational management, contract management, invoicing, process management and data science and coordination between technicians. The core key performance indicator for Equans was throughput time on corrective and preventative maintenance orders.

What's next? Bergsma said Equans will continue its current process improvement program, deep dive into more processes and look for process integration opportunities.

Larry Dignan

Editor in Chief (former)

Larry Dignan is the former Editor in Chief of Celonis Media. Before joining Celonis, he was Editor in Chief of ZDNet and has covered the technology industry and transformation trends for more than two decades, publishing articles in WallStreetWeek.com, Inter@ctive Week, The New York Times, and Financial Planning magazine.