Sarawak Energy Berhad: eCX
Challenges:
Provide an integrated solution replacing the manual and paper based system of energy connection & consumption.
Solution:
A digital application (eCX) that can be used by the end user to raise new electrical connection requests, manage existing connection, usage and billing and a backend system to support eCX used by SEB employees to manage all the requests.
Wins
Go live in 5 Months.
2 fully integrated apps: eCX Portal & eCX 1000 external users, 400 internal users
Onboarding 2.5 million customers and expanding app for another 0.5 million.
15 personas, integration to ERP & CRM leading to more reliable data for informed decision-making.
Platform upgrade followed by successful delivery. Lotus notes migration, SEC care, Mobile Fields Force App etc
Background
Sarawak Energy Berhad is the primary energy provider for the state of Sarawak, Malaysia with a population close to 3 million. Their aim is to meet the region's needs for reliable renewable energy and digitize their operations. They have an expanding user base of over 680,000 account holders and a multidisciplinary workforce of 5,000.
Client Goals
SEB had a paper based operation to receive requests for new electricity connections and manage existing connections from both domestic and commercial users. Their goal was to translate a paper-based process that required a lot of manual work, to become fully digital.
The user journey usually starts with a new application for electricity connection when the real estate construction begins by submitting all the electricity load requirements, architecture planning maps, engineering drawings etc. There are various milestones throughout the journey where end users (the Consultants/Engineers/Contractor) work closely with different departments of SEB to complete the project and have to submit loads of documents.
All these interactions and paperworks were managed with minimum digital support, which meant a high management cost, high dependency on archival systems, high response times and a huge workforce to manage this process. With this digital transformation SEB was looking forward to solving the existing problems and building a scalable solution by:
Creating a scalable portal
Replacing the manual and paper based application
Make the status visible for all.
Better communication between different user roles
UX Concept Journey
I started with a discovery session with business and users. Since the application had 2 distinct user groups (internal business users and external energy consumers) separate sessions were conducted.
I discovered the business process and identified ways to improve it by cutting down redundant or obsolete steps and making it digital-ready. The image on the right is 1 or the many archives folder for a single user flow for the existing paper-based system
UX Activities
Brainstorming with Stakeholders & BA
Collaborative whiteboarding session to identify use case, scope for improvements
Priority Mapping & Metrics with Business
It was followed by a workshop with the project team to define list downs the success metrics, potential failure reasons and, feature prioritisation.
Focus group with Customers
The next step was to interview the external users to identify their pain points. It was followed by extensive brainstorming sessions to explore potential solutions for the issues found.
Remote Usability testing
I conducted multiple rounds of remote usability testing with users. After understanding what worked and what needed to change, I iterated on the design and then, I created the high fidelity mockups for the main screens.
Conclusion
Out of many reason the critical success factor was effective involvement of business stakeholders and end users. By the end of the project the customer team was well enabled on UX methodology and were confident to incorporate it in their application development cycle.