CdE Acciona
The context
ACCIONA is a global company headquartered in Madrid, Spain that specializes in the development and administration of sustainable infrastructure solutions, with a particular focus on the renewable energy field. Its operations cover the entire process, from the conception and design to the construction, operation and maintenance of these complex infrastructures.
In their search for digital alternatives to improve project management, the Operations Department of ACCIONA's Infrastructure Division worked with NEORIS to create a Data Storytelling solution that substantially increased efficiency and led to better decision making.
The challenge
The Operations Department of ACCIONA's Infrastructure Division set a goal of developing a 360º solution that would allow for the digitalization and automation of obtaining information for projects they oversaw using a dashboard interface. To accomplish this, it was necessary to build a data platform that could:
- Cover the most important projects of the organization's four businesses: Construction, Industrial, Australia and Water, worth more than US $3 billion.
- Address the needs of 12 different functional areas, from both an executive and operational point of view.
- Integrate more than 50 data sources, coming from heterogeneous systems, in addition to manually entered information from different levels within the organization.
- Reduce information generation times and the cost of information utilization.
- Limit data quality problems that generated concern at the CEO level and have a usage rate close to 100%.
Our proposal
NEORIS worked with ACCIONA in the development and implementation of various digital and technological projects.
The collaboration resulted in the launch of Project Dashboard360°, a data storytelling solution that improves project management efficiency and aids in the making of better business decisions.
One of the key aspects that allowed this solution to be carried out was the implementation of an approval flow that encouraged continuous improvement in the quality of the data from the projects and areas under management, with control points for supervisors.
Methodology Focused On Guaranteeing Use Of The Solution For Decision Making
Project Dashboard had two main key stages: a first stage focused on defining the strategy and design of the solution and another stage focused on its implementation and putting it into production.
For the first stage, while simultaneously using a traditional methodology for understanding the current situation, NEORIS used an approach based on Data Storytelling and Design Thinking to create an effective design that guaranteed its utilization from day one. At this stage, our work took into account the following objectives:
- Business & Process-Centric: Develop a deep understanding of the problems of each business process while not getting lost in listing KPIs without justification.
- Data Storytelling: Guarantee that the 360° vision was capable of telling a business story where each user was reflected.
- Design Thinking: From the beginning, involving the user in workshops to guarantee their understanding and alignment with the solution.
- Change Management: Provide maximum value compared to the current process, in order to guarantee 100% use of the solution.
For the second stage, NEORIS built a solution focused on reusing what already existed as much as possible, integrating an approval process in the final dashboard that would allow users to have control over the reported data, drastically reducing their delivery times.
The Results
The creation of Project Dashboard 360° made it possible to reduce information generation times by up to 250% and exploitation costs by up to 400%. Data quality problems were also subsequently reduced by more than 85%.
Currently, this solution is being used by more than 60 directors who are part of a total of more than 500 users, thus approaching 100% of the users that were set as the objective. In addition, 45 projects have been integrated into the solution, representing all of the projects defined as objectives for the first phase of implementation. The Dashboard is proving to be capable of executing actions that improve the average efficiency of projects, each of which can now be analyzed annually, after being put into production.
The lack of governance and common structure before the creation of Project Dashboard resulted in reported data being of poor quality, very long deadlines and generation costs, along with systemic distrust of the process at all levels.
Today, Project Dashboard has become the key tool through which information on the organization's most critical projects is analyzed, allowing very clear action plans to be established. All teams have clarity about their roles, allowing them to interact effectively with each other and the solution.
All of this has allowed the solution to consolidate the company's key data, making it possible to detect potential improvements to evolve and update the platform. Additionally, through Artificial Intelligence (AI), the solution can incorporate new functionalities that allow decisions from analysis of past information as well as the proposal of new actions based on the generation of future scenarios.
Testimonials
“The solution we developed for ACCIONA needed to be able to improve the quality of the information and its understanding to better the decision-making capacity of their most critical projects. But there was a key point even beyond that. It had to be used by staff at different levels within the organization and respond to all the areas involved. Thanks to data storytelling, we have transformed the way in which our client makes decisions about their business processes.”
Daniel Díez Galdeano - Director of Data, AI & Analytics at NEORIS Spain“The implementation of Project Dashboard at ACCIONA is the result of an ambitious transformation project that has provided the Infrastructure Division with greater transparency and professionalism, achieving better adoption and less impact on change management, with the aim of facilitating and improving decision-making on large projects in the process of execution.”
Ernesto Díaz Bernardo - Director of Systems and Transformation Projects at ACCIONA