In an increasingly tough competitive and cost environment, Stadtwerke Wedel (STW) has readjusted its corporate strategies and is implementing various measures in this context to position itself for the future. An important aspect of this: the further development of existing skilled workers in order to bind them to the company in the long term. And this is exactly where Big Pictury came into play: In close cooperation with the management consultancy E1, Big Pictury developed a Big Picture for the internal and external communication of Stadtwerke Wedel, which shows the company structure to the employees in a transparent and simple way and thus sharpens their understanding of the individual roles in the company.
Client
For over 100 years, Stadtwerke Wedel has been one of the most important regional gas, water and energy suppliers in Schleswig-Holstein. In addition, Stadtwerke Wedel offers its customers energy services as well as future-proof telecommunications solutions with state-of-the-art fibre optic technology. Since 2007, the company has been active throughout Germany with its own brands in the electricity and natural gas sectors. E-mobility, contracting or decentralised generation plants are also part of the company’s portfolio. The development of the past years and decades shows: Stadtwerke Wedel is a forward-looking company. This also includes driving forward the energy transition and acting in an environmentally conscious manner. To this end, the company is involved in numerous projects.
Task
Like many other companies on the energy market, Stadtwerke Wedel is also subject to increasing competitive and cost pressure. In order to actively shape the energy markets in the future, Stadtwerke Wedel is therefore continuously developing. In addition to the development of new, sustainable products and services and the advancement of digitalisation within the company, the promotion of existing specialists is of particular importance. Developing these employees in a targeted manner and retaining them in the long term in order to create a functioning unit in the long term – these are important goals of Stadtwerke Wedel.
The most important basis for achieving these goals is a strategic orientation of the company that is comprehensible to all employees, including both top-down and bottom-up communication. And it was precisely for this purpose that Stadtwerke Wedel brought Big Pictury and E1 Management Consulting on board: a consulting firm that specialises in management consulting in the energy industry. In close cooperation with Stadtwerke Wedel and E1, Big Pictury was tasked with developing a Big Picture that would transparently show employees the areas of responsibility at Stadtwerke Wedel and thus sharpen their understanding of the individual roles within the company. The Big Picture was to show employees and other stakeholders the ever-increasing complexity of the energy sector as well as the core objectives of SW Wedel (customer orientation, locality and sustainability) in a simplified way and encourage viewers to discuss and implement ideas for the future and optimisation.
Implementation
Within the framework of a few workshops, the existing status quo, the “DNA” of Stadtwerke Wedel and its vision for the future of the company were analysed. For this purpose, among other things, the core processes of Stadtwerke Wedel along the entire value chain (i.e. generation, technology, trade, sales incl. services, commercial service, metering point operation, etc.) were identified and target customers clearly named. In addition, the main local buildings and areas were identified for the image creation and reproduced by Big Pictury. The objective here was to create a recognition value for the employees, stakeholders and customers. In this process, many scenes with private and business customers of Stadtwerke Wedel were created, as all processes of the municipal utility are ultimately geared towards these customers (best possible service, customer satisfaction, customer loyalty). Due to the high degree of capacity utilisation at Stadtwerke Wedel, the moderation as well as preparation and follow-up was carried out by Big Pictury and E1. The internal project team of Stadtwerke Wedel was only involved when absolutely necessary. Due to the low time demands on the internal staff, there was enough time for the core business and current topics beyond that.
The Big Picture is used by Stadtwerke Wedel in various channels – internally as well as externally: in social media, as a print version, as large-format printouts in the offices of Stadtwerke Wedel as well as at Stadtsparkasse Wedel, with which the customer service of Stadtwerke Wedel shares a building for business activities. Printed versions of the Big Picture are permanently displayed on the premises and are increasingly used in the course of current campaigns. In addition, the Big Picture is used in internal digitalisation projects.
„Our employees are amazed. The complexity of our sector and the variety of tasks of the municipal utilities could be visibly reduced with the help of just one picture.
Additionally, we were able to explain the range of tasks of municipal utilities to customers with less pronounced energy industry know-how in a comparatively simple way using the Big Picture.“
QUICK FACTS
CLIENT: Stadtwerke Wedel GmbH
SCOPE OF SERVICES: Development of a Big Picture for digital use and as a large print version
PROJECT DURATION: 3 months
BUDGET: five figures
