Interest in PI systems grows up and expands in energy sector every year. Energy companies were the first in Russia who started using business process control tools based on ARIS Process Performance Manager (ARIS PPM). I hope that my point of view from the both sides: customer and contractor will be interesting for you.
From the contractor point of view
We discussed the most interesting trends of controlling in energy sector only a few years ago. There were different processes from HR trainings to technological connection to electricity networks. We didn’t know for what kind of processes ARIS PPM gets most effective results. Nowadays we can select the typical processes for controlling. These processes are the most popular and have very high demand in energy sector in Russia. The leaders on this market niche are procurement management, technological connection to electricity network and maintenance service processes.
I would like to focus your attention to a process of procurement management to highlight the key points of their leadership.
First reason is a huge managers interest because process flows through the whole organization and many departments participate in this activity. This interest is based on requirements to control quality of purchasing programs, purchase requisition control, time of performance of a contracts control and budget economy of purchasing programs.
Second reason is that ARIS PPM perfectly supports flows of procurement management activity and allows managers to control each step of the process.
And finally, cooperation between customer and supplier is always be a bottleneck and needs to be analyzed and controlled for improving. Moreover it needs quick reaction from process manager if something comes in a wrong way. That’s why ARIS PPM is necessary tool in this kind of situation.
Thanks to new technical possibilities and consultant’s knowledge, opportunities to integrate ARIS PPM with other processes became wider. For example, we have already taught ARIS PPM working with «1С». This is Russian automation platform. Its significant step for us due to this platform is on the top of the three automation systems in Russia. This integration allows us to wide list of processes for controlling, including processes of energy sector. We have already got a feedback from our customers and see interest to the following processes: billing, legal support, project management, order to cash etc.
From customer point of view
ARIS PPM grows not only in height but also in width. If earlier we implemented controlling systems in central office or in a pilot branch, now we do it in whole landscape. These are end-to-end processes passing via central office to branches.
Generally energy companies have wide branch network; therefore, I would like to focus your attention on business process KPIs list. KPIs that are interested for management in branches and central office are different: not only as values but also as the KPI set. Due to the ARIS PPM growth in the width, business processes control approaches have changed, now it is not an instrument, now it is a concept with its own control standards, tools and results.
Nowadays energy companies are interested in maintenance service programs control, procurement management programs control, and control of technological connection to electricity network.
As you can see that the key words here are «control» and «executed processes». I would like to notice that there is a huge interest to ARIS PPM tool in Russia. I made this conclusion based on the feedback from our customers during ARIS Process-Forum 2010. User activity in ARIS PPM is growing up from year to year, and it is understandable because where there is a «process execution» there is a « process control » indeed.
