"Basecom is at the heart of all the stages involved in a single project, enabling us to keep better track of the various jobs from start to finish, so that we have a centralised overview of all our activities.
Gaëtan SENELLE-COJAN, Deputy Head of Enedis Paris Telecom Agency
About ENEDIS
With 37 million customers, 800 sites throughout France, 1.377 million km of power lines, €4.254 billion invested in 2019 and 38,754 employees, Enedis is a public service company that manages the electricity distribution network, develops, operates and modernises the electricity network and manages the associated data. Independent of the energy suppliers responsible for selling and managing electricity contracts, Enedis carries out connections, troubleshooting, meter reading and all technical interventions.
The project
In 2109, the Paris Regional Division of Enedis, which, unlike the other regional agencies, owns its network, launched an invitation to tender as part of an organisational project to develop a solution capable of housing all its management and activity monitoring applications. The aim: to have a single database and interconnect all its applications running simultaneously, so that they can communicate with each other.
The issues
Gaëtan SENELLE-COJAN, Deputy Head of Telecom Agency of the Paris entity of Enedis, comments: "We launched our project at the beginning of 2018 and Cloud Temple was selected during 2019 as part of a public invitation to tender. At the time, we didn't have the resources and skills needed to develop and implement such a project internally. "
As well as centralising and automating the day-to-day management of all Enedis Paris' activities, the new tool was designed to enable teams to work together more effectively, boosting performance and improving customer satisfaction.
What's more, Enedis Paris wanted a fluid and intuitive tool, so that its twenty or so agents could get to grips with it easily and concentrate on tasks with greater added value from a business point of view (to the detriment of more administrative tasks).
Lastly, the contractor was tasked with designing a tool in the form of an easily accessible web application, using an agile development method so that Enedis could proceed in iterative stages and incorporate user expectations and requests as they arose.
The solution
Following a consultation involving a number of different players, Cloud Temple was chosen in mid-2019 on the basis of developing a single application platform based on modern, scalable technologies (mobile and cloud), albeit hosted in-house for reasons of data sensitivity. Drawing on its experience in prototyping, several preliminary workshops were organised with the customer to conceptualise the project (even before the development phase) and ensure the right direction was taken, from both a technical and functional point of view.
Known as Basecom, this application solution now enables all the data associated with the various applications to be integrated automatically and in real time (particularly during work on customers' premises), avoiding the errors of multiple re-entries.
Gaëtan SENELLE-COJAN continues: "Basecom is at the root of all the stages linked to a single site, allowing us to better track the various jobs from opening to closing, so that we have a centralised global view of activities."
From a technical point of view, the use of an SQL database (for greater robustness and simplified administration) and an open-source approach, as well as the introduction of automatic back-up and data redundancy, have governed the technological choices predefined by Enedis.
In functional terms, the solution includes the ability to attach files to the various 'business' folders, generate dashboards for better management of activities, launch queries based on a pre-established catalogue of data, and offer an optimised experience for the various users.
What's more, it features a 'responsive design' approach and adapts to all types of terminal in terms of access, including tablets and smartphones. Accessible by all users simultaneously in a secure manner and in compliance with RGPD specifications, it includes an authentication service with access rights management based on user profiles.
The benefits
It has been in production since January 2020, and initial feedback from users has so far been very satisfactory.
Constantly evolving, the application can now be used to track the different types of telecoms requests on the network, saving a significant amount of time and providing a better understanding of customers' needs.
Gaëtan SENELLE-COJAN concludes: "Thanks to the application's interactivity, we've already seen a better rate of commitment from our various agents and a significant improvement in the monitoring of interventions. Finally, the principle of agility (a key skill in project management today) that prevails within the solution means that we can update it regularly, even when it's in use. Finally, the choice of recent technologies and tools should enable us to easily upgrade the system as the market evolves.