Consulting area: Digitalization

From 2018 to early 2021, we supported one of Europe’s largest energy providers in the implementation of a new IT platform for its private customer business in Germany. The digitization program included identifying the requirements of the business units, developing and releasing features, and supporting the departments during go-live of the features. During this time, we supported the program management in the role of the central project management office (PMO) in project and change management.

The program initially focused on involving the various departments in Germany in setting up and stabilizing the IT platform developed across all countries.

For this purpose, a project organization was set up to identify the requirements of the departments and subsequently introduce the developed functions in the line organization. The program also aimed to gradually migrate existing German customers to the new platform.

In the course of the project, the program organization was significantly expanded in order to also control the development and release the features from the German unit. For this purpose, a new program organization and governance had to be established and additional stakeholders had to be integrated. At times, the program consisted of more than 700 employees and a budget of approximately 200 million euros.

The project lasted 32 months and was accompanied by up to four alternating consultants.

In this project, acondas successfully supported the project initiation and planning including redesign after reorganization of the program. In addition, we worked with the program management to establish and implement the program organization and control (governance, reporting, resource planning, risk management, etc.). For this purpose, we collaborated with numerous departments of the client company, relevant corporate functions, other programs and external partners.

We were able to draw on our proven approaches to managing digitization programs and setting up a modern IT PMO as well as project and change management in digital projects. We supported the anchoring of the changes in the line organization, for example, through extensive stakeholder management as well as planning and implementation of change management and communication measures.

The project successfully established the new IT platform and migrated more than 13 million existing customers. The program organization and governance required for this was successfully implemented and adapted to changing circumstances during the course of the project. The goal of extensive involvement of program staff, specialist departments and other stakeholders was also achieved.