A conversation with Elena Beck, BKW

A conversation with Elena Beck, Head of Risk Management at BKW

As part of ‘PwC 2019 Global Risk, Internal Audit and Compliance Survey’, we interviewed Elena Beck, Head of Risk Management at BKW. In an interview with Marc Buser, expert in governance, risk and compliance at PwC, she shared her views on how digital innovations are transforming the energy sector and how they as a company are using new trends as opportunities.

How would you describe your company’s level of digital maturity? 

The energy sector is undergoing a digital transformation. We aim to take an active part in shaping this transformation so we can grow in the process. It was a few years ago that BKW began promoting new digitisation initiatives. We recognise that we can evolve and improve using smarter tools and digital processes and that we must commit ourselves to this strategy. The days of alluring white papers that never see their way to implementation are over. 

The ‘digitisation radar’ is an internal tool developed by BKW that not only profiles digitalisation projects across technologies and ideas Group-wide but also tracks their status. Today, over 100 different projects from all lines of service are collated using this tool. The interactive card gives an overview of the digitisation activities that are currently ongoing at BKW. This allows for better exploitation of synergies within the Group while also benefiting from existing know-how. 

Irrespective of location and system, exchanges and interactions among colleagues within BKW are taking place increasingly via the Teams - platform, that makes it easy to share communications, files and contacts. We consequently spend less time in meetings and write fewer e-mails because in Teams everything is clearly laid out, available and always up-to-date. 

No doubt there is still a lot to be done and we have a long way to go, but BKW is well on the way.

Can you give an example of a digital initiative that has helped your company to achieve better results? 

The electricity market has been changing radically in recent years. The liberalisation of the electricity market drastically shifts the focus towards customer experience. Energy consumers will not only decide which electricity provider they choose, they also enabled to become active market participants, acting as electricity producers or service providers themselves. BKW develops new innovative tools as for example a communication portal with a 360-degree client view and an intelligent chatbot for client queries. Our goal is an integrated client experience tailored to specific needs.

In the grid segment we are running a pilot project using drones. With the assistance of drone photography and machine learning, the grid infrastructure is inspected and hotspots are identified for maintenance. 

The introduction of smart meters and decentralised power generation means that measurement and customer data streams will grow exponentially. We employ big data analysis and artificial intelligence to design solutions for processing and interpreting these data. In general, the potential of AI is high: already today, it is helping us in terms of production – if high winds are fore-casted, our wind farms will be temporarily shut down to avoid any possible damage. We plan to harness such AI algorithms for other types of power plants as well. New technologies like blockchain are playing an ever greater role both in trading and in power plant management. Excel spread-sheets are definitely a thing of the past.

Have risk management, internal audit and/or compliance teams been involved in these initiatives?

Risk management is closely linked with all processes and developments related to trading. Concerning other digital initiatives within BKW - we are involved where it makes sense - data collection, analysis and visualisation is crucial for risk management. Flexible reporting tools with intuitive interactive dashboards for end-users will help us to access and rapidly analyze the information. In this way, risk management will be able to actively support decision-making processes while meaningfully contributing to the company’s success.

Other corporate functions, as for instance Controlling and Compliance have similar needs in this respect. Consequently, we do not want isolated databases for each department; rather, we are interested in a scalable data design that allows different departments within BKW to be connected to each other. We need interconnected systems instead of satellite solutions.

Are some company areas ahead of others in terms of digital progress? 

In general, we have to become more dynamic, moving away from Excel and PowerPoint towards interactive data platforms that make high-quality information available instantly. Digitalisation is changing the way how we live and work, and of course, habitudes are not changing overnight. It may well need a generational change to abolish internal silos of databases, functions and levels of hierarchy and to install new colloborative and sharing work models. This culture shift is one of our greatest challenges and at the same time our greatest opportunity.

Has BKW’s risk tolerance changed in the course of its digital journey?

As a result of globalisation High Data availability becomes increasingly important as a result of globalisation, with information security playing a key role. BKW works closely with external specialists to be able to safeguard against possible cyber threats and guarantee cyber security. Our IT infrastructure is continuously monitored to identify and ward off cyber attacks. Security-relevant events are evaluated, and measures derived from these evaluations are implemented effectively. In addition, particular importance is given to systems redundancy and regularly scheduled data back-ups. It is clear to us that, given the right data management, the possibilities offered by digitisation outweigh the risks. 

How does digitisation change management’s expectations of your function?

Group Management places a high priority on digitisation, by supporting new projects and initiatives. The more transparent, complete and tangible our data is, the faster and more efficiently will we be able to make informed decisions. Although we are not a start-up that simply tests everything, we continually starts new initiatives for optimising and streamlining our processes. This often spawns new creative ideas, products and potentially also new business models.

Our job as risk management is to identify, assess and manage risks to protect our business - interconnected databases and system and modern visualisation tools helps us to see the ‘big picture’. That’s why we systematically automate our business processes and doing so, each employee is becoming something of a data expert.

Are digital functions applied in your processes to work faster and smarter? 

Efficiency potential is generally very high – my colleagues from one of our departments have recently calculated that they saved some 80 hours of work, also roughly two weeks, replacing one single manual data collection form by an automated workflow with electronic data entry. So it is everyone’s responsability to systematically drive forward the digital culture shift.

What is more, digitalisation is driven both internally and externally. On the one hand, regulatory compliance reporting requirements in the energy sector are increasing. Annual reports in paper form belongs to the past; today the data must be reported and published partly as soon as available or even in real time. On the other hand, due to our strong growth, many new subsidiaries have joined the company in recent years, bringing their own specific needs. Digitalisation helps enormously integrating them into our network while creating the requisite transparency.