Digital Transformation of EPM Group Empresas Públicas de Medellín through IoT

EPM Group Empresas Públicas de Medellín is a Colombian public utility group made up of companies located in Central America, Chile, Mexico, the United States, Spain, and Colombia. The group offers services including electricity, natural gas, drinking water, basic sanitation, garbage collection and disposal, and information and communication technologies. These services improve the lives of more than 13.5 million citizens. EPM’s strategy is to grow with people, with emphasis on sustainability. Corporate social responsibility, effective corporate governance, long-term planning, and technical, legal, financial, and managerial rigour are the main pillars of their strategy. EPM contributes to the development of a prosperous environment, promoting a respectful business performance with importance on the economic, environmental, and social consequences of their actions.

EPM Group Empresas Públicas de Medellín, a public utility group providing services like energy, gas, water, and waste management, faced several challenges in their operations. The implementation of a digital platform for the EPM Shared Services center was a key part of the national plan to achieve synergies, economies of scale, savings, and standardization. However, during the creation of this new service area, several fundamental problems were detected. These included a lack of unified processes for support activities throughout the group, resulting in work duplication and dispersed functions. There were multiple technological platforms to support transactional activities in the various companies that make up the EPM Group. Synergies and economies of scale were lost in contracts related to similar activities in EPM and its subsidiaries. The resources used and activity support indicators did not correspond with what you would expect from a business group the size of EPM. The incorporation of new acquisitions could not be carried out efficiently due to the lack of standardized and unified best practices across the entire group. The generation of group reports was complex and involved many manual activities. The structure by functions did not support continuous improvement or promote innovation in support activities.

EPM Group adopted a strategy based on self-management to address these challenges. Teams working on organizational culture and business communications structured the fundamental idea of self-management, focused on all levels of education and responsibility within the organization and for external users. By implementing the digital platform, EPM significantly improved the service and relationship with its internal and external customers and suppliers. They evolved from phone calls, physical documentation, and emails to a platform of self-management and the online management of pending tasks and unified notifications. The internal clients could initiate different types of processes, keep abreast of the status of their applications, and track running and completed processes. The external customers now had the option to start processes from the comfort of their homes. The platform gave suppliers an immediate link to the ongoing processes, reducing process times and positively impacting the environment thanks to the significant reduction in paper documents required for the processes. This also generated economic savings for the suppliers by reducing the amount of travel to hand deliver documents.

• The digital transformation of EPM Group has created a culture of continuous improvement for their services. The AuraQuantic platform allows for an accurate measurement of employee performance. The implementation of the digital platform has led to the consolidation, standardization, and centralization of transactional activities at the national level with the generation of economies of scale for the business Group. It has also led to the implementation of a service provision model for support processes based on a portfolio of services, cost transparency, and the development of service level agreements. The resources used for services have been optimized by sharing best practices and a culture of continuous improvement. The integration of new companies to the group has become fast and effective. The management of the Internal air-travel service has reduced from an average of 10 business days to an average of 2 business days. The improvement in compliance with the service agreements for the travel service has gone from 24.41% to 83.88%.

• 80% Time reduction for travel management
• 84% Improvement in compliance
• 50% Service cost reductions