Considering BPO to improve work efficiency and to reduce work hours
Wanting to consolidate operations that are currently done by individuals in disparate ways
Wanting to control costs for improving work efficiency such as labor costs
Want to respond to changes in business environment swiftly and appropriately
Want to consolidate employee know-how to standardize and streamline work
Wanting to control costs for improving work efficiency such as labor costs
BPO
Outsourced the calculation of wheeling charges that had been done by employees
Reduced work hours and improved efficiency by consolidating and streamlining operations that had been done in disparate ways
BPO reduced employee overtime work
Organizational structure has been built to be able to respond to increase of work
Mr. Tadayuki Watanabe, Manager, Network Service Center Operation Sect. （Ⅲ）
Mr. Hideki Kodama, Deputy Manager, Network Service Center Operation Sect. （Ⅲ）
Mr. Satoshi Nagamoto, Deputy Manager, Network Service Dept. Service Management Group
Chugoku Electric Power Transmission & Distribution Co., Inc. (hereafter referred to as Chugoku Electric Power Network) was spun off from the Chugoku Electric Power Co., Inc. following the amendment to the Electricity Business Act when it was enforced in April 2020. As a power utility company, the Company has reliably been providing electricity 24/7. Its Network Service Center (NSC) is playing a central role in communicating with retail power utilities, executing contracts such as wheeling supply agreement, calculating and collecting wheeling charges, and operating call centers.
Mr. Watanabe said, “The NSC has been organizing and enhancing its business operating structure since our company was spun off, however, we are experiencing a rapid increase in the number of inquiries and applications in line with the expansion of renewable energy implementation. A new wheeling charge system* was introduced in 2023 and other national level changes are being considered. Addressing these reforms is an important issue for us.”
* New wheeling charge system - Revenue Cap System: The government of Japan started to impose a limit in the revenue to general electricity transmission and distribution utilities, and the wheeling charge should be set within this limit. As a result, general electricity transmission and distribution utilities have to actively engage in improving efficiency and reducing cost.
Chugoku Electric Power Transmission & Distribution then decided to outsource part of its standardized wheeling charge calculation services to BELLSYSTEM24 to improve efficiency, starting October 2022 and progressing in stages. Mr. Watanabe said, “BELLSYSTEM24 has been our partner since February 2019 when we opened our NSC call center. They have also been responsible for the call center of our parent company, Chugoku Power Company, for almost 20 years. The major reason that we chose BELLSYSTEM24 was that they are already familiar with our business where we use a lot of technical terms and dedicated systems. Another reason was that we thought highly of their initiatives towards stable operation and ensuring quality. We thought BELLSYSTEM24 was the best partner for engaging in a new endeavor and we didn't think twice about choosing them.”
In outsourcing wheeling charge calculation, their concern was whether they could maintain the same quality as before.
Mr. Kodama said, “Errors in wheeling charge calculation and invoicing would cause a great trouble to electricity retailers. We needed to do detailed preparations for this reason.” Another concern was that this BPO had few precedences in other general electricity transmission and distribution utilities.
Mr. Kodama said, “We didn’t find a lot of cases of outsourcing wheeling charge calculation work when we inquired with other power utilities. A major challenge was to build a scheme in a short period of time when there were few precedences to follow.”
In this context, Chugoku Electric Power Network and BELLSYSTEM24 jointly started to work on the following four points starting February 2022:
The first point was to prepare a timeline for outsourcing. Mr. Kodama said, “We started to prepare a timeline by selecting tasks that could be outsourced. We considered it thoroughly because the amount of work to be outsourced changes depending on the content and volume of each job. BELLSYSTEM24 also proposed taking an inventory of tasks, and started the preparation work together with Chugoku Electric Power Network.
The second point was for managers of BELLSYSTEM24 to learn to do the tasks. After managers from BELLSYSTEM24 learned the basics, they did the actual work along with employees of the Chugoku Electric Power Network. Mr. Kodama said, “I feel that those managers were able to acquire practical skills by learning both in classrooms and on the job.” Those managers also not only learned the work, but also improved and proposed the workflow. They learned the tasks as they aimed to improve the work efficiency.
The third point was to prepare a work manual. This is where the two partners placed the biggest efforts. NSC prepared the manual based on the current version prepared by the employees, and reflected employee-accumulated know-how as much as possible. This manual was reviewed by BELLSYSTEM24 and was edited to be the manual that covers all work procedures and should be followed to perform work efficiently.
Mr. Kodama said, “The new manual prepared by BELLSYSTEM24 made me realize that the old version had areas that were lacking from their point of view, even though we thought they were sufficient.”
Mr. Nagamoto said, "BELLSYSTEM24 helped us visualize what each employee was doing and their know-how, then consolidated and standardized this information so that it can be used to educate new employees. From the NSC's point of view, it's a great manual."
The fourth point was hiring and training of talent. BELLSYSTEM24 exercised its unique strengths here to put the finishing touches on the actual execution of work while using the manual as a base.
Mr. Nagamoto said, “BELLSYSTEM24 did their best to assign their talent who are familiar with our work, such as communicators who had worked for the Chugoku Electric Power. I think this makes the work go smoothly.”
Mr. Watanabe said, “We felt comfortable that BELLSYSTEM24 assigned our work to communicators who understand the knowledge and technical terms used in the Chugoku Electric Power and the NSC without us explaining from scratch.”
Having said that, the communicators sometimes had difficulty understanding some of the new work. To overcome this, BELLSYSTEM24 provided training sessions as we exchanged opinions with employees of the Chugoku Electric Power Network. Mr. Watanabe and Mr. Kodama reflected on this by saying, “A factor in our outsourcing starting successfully was that they communicated to us often. Also, our employees' knowledge increased due to the training and dissemination based on documentation.”
Since starting BPO in October 2022, several results have emerged.
Mr. Watanabe and Mr. Kodama said, “The best thing that happened is that employees who were working on calculating wheeling charges can now work on enhancing and addressing other operations. We expect that we will have more new work to come, and we are ready because we now have the manpower.” At the same time, BELLSYSTEM24 was able to reduce the anticipated work hours because operations were consolidated and workflow was made more efficient as we prepared the manual.
Another major achievement was that operations were documented into the manual upon BPO.
Mr. Nagamoto said, “BELLSYSTEM24 standardized know-how that each employee has accumulated, and operations that were done differently by individual employees. I expect that this will make the work more efficient, as well as increase the stability of operations and improve the work quality.”
The NSC of the Chugoku Electric Power Network says they would like to continue reviewing the BPO going forward in order to improve the operational efficiency and the work quality.
Mr. Watanabe said, “We have a number of operations that need to be processed in different ways, such as work that uses dedicated systems and their auxiliary tools and work using paper-based forms. We will be addressing this issue for further digitization, paperless initiatives, and BPO as we review our wheeling system and computerization of our work. We are expecting BELLSYSTEM24, who have been working with us as partners, to make further proposals actively from an external viewpoint.”
Mr. Nagamoto added, “NSC is at the core of our organization. NSC handles various work including invoicing the wheeling charges and handling call center traffic as the organization closest to our customers. Our thinking to date has been that we do everything internally. However, some work can be done with higher quality and more efficiently if we leverage external help. We would like to consider further BPO.”
Chugoku Electric Power Transmission & Distribution Co.
Corporate website：https://www.energia.co.jp/nw/
Chugoku Electric Power Transmission & Distribution Co., Inc. was spun off from Chugoku Electric Power on April 1, 2019, following an amendment to the Electricity Business Act. Its main businesses are general transmission and distribution of electricity and power generation on remote islands. The service areas include Tottori Prefecture, Shimane Prefecture, Okayama Prefecture, Hiroshima Prefecture, Yamaguchi Prefecture, Hyogo Prefecture (only Fukuura, Ako City), Kagawa Prefecture (only Shodo County and Kagawa County), Ehime Prefecture (only Ochi County and parts of Imabari City: Yoshiumi Cho, Miyakubo Cho, Hakata Cho, Kamiura Cho, Omishima Cho, and Sekizen). Capital was 20 billion JPY (as of March 31, 2022).
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