Avacon Natur is helping customers become more energy efficient through streamlined, platform-based customer management based on Dynamics 365

The challenge: Highly specific customer requirements and data storage spread among subsidiaries

Avacon is working with its customers to drive the energy transition forward. The company’s ultra-modern, eco-friendly energy solutions help customers reduce their local carbon footprint and meet their energy requirements in a cost-effective way. Maximizing the efficiency of each system hinges on tailoring it precisely to the unique production process of the company in question. “We work closely with our customers and put their specific requirements under the microscope so that we can offer them suitable solutions. The key to success is putting the customer front and center,” says Dr. Johannes Voges, Head of Digital Transformation at Avacon Netz and Chief Product Owner in the group-wide rollout project at Avacon AG.

That works only when customers are given intensive support throughout the process. But in the past, this was very tricky because many processes were documented in different systems. “We were living in a world of Excel sheets, data drives, e-mail traffic, and endless phone calls. The result was redundant data storage, process uncertainty, and inefficiency,” says Mathias Pfaus, Product Owner in the Field Service Module rollout project for Avacon. “So, we set out to find a solution that would allow us to model the entire customer life cycle while also optimizing our own internal processes.” Avacon immediately adopted a comprehensive mindset and wanted a solution that would also enhance collaboration between the various subsidiaries of the holding company, Avacon AG. The solution presented itself in the form of Microsoft Dynamics 365. The individual modules of the software-as-a-service platform can be adjusted to fit the company’s various divisions while also offering an extensive portfolio of functions.

The solution: Consistent data enhances customer retention and connects subsidiaries

The project vision was to digitalize and optimize processes relating to the entire customer life cycle to create an integrated platform. To this end, Avacon Natur took an agile approach to systematically developing and rolling out the individual Dynamics 365 modules. What began in 2018 with the implementation of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Marketing and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales was then expanded step by step. Today, the company’s own customer service setup is connected to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service, its technical operations division is connected to its approximately 40 installers by Microsoft Dynamics 365 Field Service, and the project management teams responsible for the on-site setup of individual customer energy systems are connected through Microsoft Dynamics 365 Project Service Automation. In short, from the first contact with a prospective a customer, the entire life cycle is now managed using Dynamics 365. Customer data can be updated and enriched in successive process steps within the life cycle. For instance, the field teams can call up all information relating to the maintenance and servicing of Avacon systems at any time. Pfaus is impressed by the benefits of the new solution: “Generating maintenance schedules and work orders is now fully automated, thanks to Field Service. All technical data for the systems can be viewed at a glance, and the installers know immediately what tools and spare parts they will need. We can schedule site visits well in advance, make optimum use of resources, and avoid unnecessary steps and costs.” Documentation of these visits is subsequently managed on Microsoft SharePoint, which operates as a central document storage system. And thanks to a connection to a service provider portal, this tool can also assign and manage work orders placed with external service providers. “That was just the first step. There’s still a great deal of untapped potential for increasing efficiency—very much in the spirit of supply chain management,” Voges says.

Due to the sheer volume of customer data in play, data protection was high on Voges’s agenda. So, in close coordination with Avacon’s data protection officer, Voges and his team established concepts for documentation, authorization, and deletion, as well as defined processes for access and permissions. In this way, the team ensured that Avacon had no trouble complying with energy sector guidelines for data security and data protection.

These efforts also mean that the company now has a consistent data structure and homogenous datasets. “We were able to kill two birds with one stone—we minimized the effort required to roll out and maintain complex system interfaces and got rid of a huge amount of redundant data. In addition, the increase in efficiency and quality had the positive knock-on effect we wanted for our customers,” Voges says.

Avacon Natur is even passing on the template of marketing, sales, and customer service modules tailored specifically to the energy sector to the other E.ON business units. “We’re now getting inquiries about Field Service and Project Service Automation, which we’re currently using, from Avacon Connect and Avacon Netz,” Voges says. There are plans to encourage other companies within the Avacon Group to adopt other Dynamics 365 modules. Although some 300 users work with the marketing, sales, and customer service modules, only around 100 use the full range. An expansion of Microsoft Power Platform is also in the pipeline. Using Microsoft Power Apps, Voges and Pfaus want to make the Dynamics 365 dashboards for system efficiency and CO₂ reductions available also to customers.