Executive Network
Click Here, Learn More
Alexa Cordell
Digital Learning Manager, EDF Renewables North America
Supernova Award Category:
The Organization:
EDF Renewables North America is a leading power producer and service provider with 35 years of expertise. It delivers grid-scale power: wind, solar photovoltaic, and storage projects; distribution-scale power: solar and storage; asset optimization: technical, operational, and commercial expertise to maximize performance of generating projects, and onsite solutions, offering a full suite of onsite energy solutions for commercial and industrial customers: solar, storage, EV charging, energy management systems, and microgrids. EDF Renewables’ North American portfolio consists of 16 GW of developed projects and 13 GW under service contracts. EDF Renewables North America is a subsidiary of EDF Renewables, the dedicated renewable energy affiliate of the EDF Group.
The Problem:
Our technicians and employees in the field use SAP ECC6 to complete essential day-to-day processes, such as creating maintenance notifications and service orders. Some of the processes are based on regulatory requirements for reporting so it’s critical that they’re completed correctly in our highly regulated complex industry. Because the application has multiple elements, employees would often experience errors and have to submit tickets to get help or ask for additional training.
To meet our educational needs, I built e-learning SAP simulations, which took weeks to create – and then employees needed to complete in-classroom training or e-learning modules. I needed an efficient way to create guidance for employees and get them up-to-speed quickly to ensure compliance, avoid risk, and enable team members to focus on high-impact work. Ultimately we needed to proactively minimize risks, save on training time and troubleshooting expenses, speed up processes, and continuously improve employees’ experience.
The Solution:
We needed just-in-time learning, accurate process adherence, and targeted change management; I was on a mission to improve compliance, process speed, and employee experience by providing guardrails and empowering folks to do their work. I found this in WalkMe’s Digital Adoption Platform (DAP), which sits on top of software to provide on screen guidance, automation, and actionable data analytics.
After finding that the cost of delay for just one key service order process was $21,000/week. We started a WalkMe pilot for SAP ECC6, a critical application with the highest number of support tickets. The pilot saw tickets drop by 90%, and newsletter views increased by more than 80% with the use of WalkMe on-screen pop-ups, proving that the guardrails worked.
Historically, it took up to 25 days to create our e-learnings. With WalkMe, it took only five days to create the equivalent guidance. 725 hours were saved for employees and instructional designers during the pilot alone!
The Results:
EDF went on to expand our digital adoption solutions to all SAP ECC-6 users, using WalkMe’s guidance and automation to: replace our traditional e-learning methods and practices and provide built-in guardrails; avoid snowball effects from improperly completed forms; proactively mitigate risk and reduce downstream work.
We quickly expanded WalkMe, starting with our HR software, Ceridian Dayforce – another system that’s used across the business. Previously we created so many trainings, open sessions, and emails, yet confusion persisted. Our new targeted approach uses DAP to share important info (like performance review processes) and, using WalkMe’s segmentation, we create personalized menus and content, including different views per role, so the right people get the right information at the right time. When introducing a new career portal, we used DAP to seamlessly shuttle employees accustomed to our legacy system to the new platform, proactively removing confusion and saving time.
WalkMe is now live on ten systems and in three languages to provide just-in-time guidance to all of our employees. We see WalkMe as a fantastic resource for building agile practices, helping project teams receive feedback through analytics and surveys, then meeting our users where they are and developing the best user experience possible, and continuing this infinite loop of data-driven employee experience improvements and resulting business outcomes.
Metrics:
Optimized cross-application support based on real user data saves time, increases compliance, and drives ROI. Our digital adoption strategy provides the most up-to-date information and guardrails to employees to ensure their success. It may be as small as approving an expense report in Concur, or as complicated as creating a sales order in SAP, or as sensitive as completing their performance appraisals in our HRIS, with WalkMe, employees are empowered to move fluidly between processes and applications, and are able to do things quickly, efficiently, and accurately. Since implementing WalkMe, EDF has decreased support tickets by up to 90%. In 2022, EDF’s first year using WalkMe on multiple applications, we saw an estimated $1.5 million in cost avoidance from deflected support costs, improved process compliance, and hours saved. Additionally, we’re able to deploy new solutions to proactively offset user errors or confusion directly in the application *5x* faster than our previous process. In addition to instructor and employee hours saved, this is a much better employee experience. WalkMe Insights and Digital Experience Analytics provide the full picture of the current user experience and state of application engagement. We can see how people are moving through systems, or when they’re looking for something in the wrong app. With those insights, we’re able to build cross-application support, adjust our content, and continuously improve.
The Technology:
We use WalkMe’s DAP across 10 systems to provide customized in-app guidance and automation in 3 languages, English, Spanish, and French. WalkMe segmentation and pop-ups make it easy to push info to the right people when and how they need it, regardless of their language, location, or role and with automation, we provide employees with an easier, simplified experience and reduce the risk of errors. Data analytics allows us to understand the lived user experience and continuously improve.
Disruptive Factor:
EDF has used WalkMe to completely redefine our employees’ relationship with the technology at their disposal. We now have full visibility and the ability to take action to improve the user experience and efficiency of our employees across enterprise apps. Digital adoption has become an essential element of the company’s ongoing change management strategy.
We are an early adopter of WalkMe Discovery, which collects data processed by AI-based algorithms to map how applications are used across departments. This next level of data will inform EDF’s future decisions about when and how to implement digital adoption solutions, as well as manage overall application spend.
We want to enable employees to fully utilize the technology at their fingertips and then to accurately perform tasks, provide feedback, and have a positive and delightful experience as they fluently and fluidly move between their applications to accomplish even greater efficiencies. Our digital adoption strategy helps us create Digital Dexterity by building consistent experiences across applications, embracing automation, taking a human-first approach to in-tool learning, and various other techniques.
Shining Moment:
I’m most proud of the relationships strengthened and built across the org due to our WalkMe implementation. I have since grown my team, developed those already on my team, educated others on digital dexterity, and really connected and made an impact with people. It shows the powerful impact our work has had on productivity, business outcome, and individuals’ success. I’m proud to continue our work and look forward to even more value with WalkMe’s product evolution
About EDF Renewables North America
EDF Renewables North America is a leading power producer and service provider. It delivers grid-scale power: wind, solar photovoltaic, and storage projects; distribution-scale power: solar and storage; asset optimization: technical, operational, and commercial expertise to improve generating projects, and onsite solutions: solar, storage, EV charging, energy management systems, and microgrids.
