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Very powerful tools can be extremely useful in improving processes at any company, however, they are to no avail if no talent is overseeing them. Therefore, there’s a slight misunderstanding of the concept of data driven that we often apply to the companies of the future. It’s not the data that guides us, it’s the people who know how to identify and harness data that guide us.
We are acutely aware of this at Endesa, and this is why we have decided to launch the data experts community, a highly multidisciplinary team, but one that unites the best drivers for the company's big data.
Spearheading this initiative, although he prefers to describe his role as only “galvaniser”, is Juan Raggio, Endesa Agile Transformation Officer, who along with the rest of the People and Organisation team, has carried out the task of identifying the company’s employees and teams who were already engaged in this data harnessing. This study has revealed many more employees than one would expect, from multiple business areas and staff departments, who play around with data and apply it to improving their day-to-day processes and tasks.
When you attend a meeting with this new community, the first thing you might notice is that they don’t all fit into the same box, as they are all completely different. But after a couple of minutes in the Open Power Space (where they usually meet) you'll begin to spot the similarities. And the first thing is the most surprising: they are digital, but they’re not on their mobile phones and computers. At the most you’ll see a laptop, but on the whole, eyes are paying attention to whoever is speaking.
“I was very surprised by the number of people at Endesa who are interested in this topic, besides, we don't all do the same thing - actually there are many different roles within the community and therefore we can harness this; everyone participates and contributes with what they have and what they think, and this is very interesting.”
Alicia Mateo, head of demand projection and management for Endesa
We can see a good example of Alicia Mateo's explanation in Marta Redondo, in generation, who has been evolving in forecasting based on big data for year and a half: “When I started we had just one Excel document and little else. Now we are able to automate many processes to anticipate specific consumption or a possible failure in the facilities, all very technical. Then we have this community and suddenly we are talking about commercial forecasting and you realise that it is actually applicable to fuel consumption or boiler temperature forecasts”.
The opposite example is Tomás Cruz, responsible precisely for intelligent customer marketing, which is dedicated to "finding ways for data to directly generate value in the income statement". And this is not new, he explains that they have been working on this kind of initiative since 1999: "We might not realise it, but we are a reference, not only in the sector, but in the general industry".
Also within the scope of this business area is Javier Tejedor, responsible for campaigns and systems that can detect abnormality and fraud. In his case he uses machine learning to identify cases of fraud. And he agrees with Tomás: "We were pioneers when it comes to using data predictability to find cases of fraud and now they use it in everything from banking to insurance". “The good thing is that this community has helped us to see that we are not alone, that many people at Endesa work in similar processes and not only in Digital Solutions, but above all out in the world, applying them directly to their businesses. I believe that the creation of this community has been a very intelligent move by People and Organisation, because the tendency is always to seek from outside, but we have fantastic experts right here, so together we can get the most out of our own data”.
It cannot be explained better. Joining together, collaborating and sharing experiences is what allows us to get the most out of something that we already have a lot of, but that on its own won’t get us anywhere apart from occupying gigabytes of useless hard drives.