Stadtwerke Wedel has developed a completely new means of communication for customers and staff. It has an immediate and lasting effect.
When field service technicians want to map the results of a strategy process on their vehicles, this is unusual to say the least. Normally, workshops between managers and consulting teams deliver extensive presentations or complicated organizational charts that don’t mean much to the people on the road or in the company. This is hardly surprising, because in an increasingly complex market environment, tasks, structures and processes are becoming ever more varied and complex, even for smaller utility companies.
A lot has also happened at Stadtwerke Wedel since it was founded over 100 years ago: today, the company is one of the most important regional gas, water and energy suppliers in Schleswig-Holstein. In addition, Stadtwerke Wedel offers its customers energy services and telecommunication solutions with state-of-the-art fiber 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 and decentralized generation plants are also part of the company’s portfolio. In order to remain successful, Stadtwerke Wedel is constantly evolving. The energy transition is being driven forward, new products and services are being created for new customer groups and digitalization is progressing.
The finished Big Picture with lots of visual elements and example situations that make the company’s strategic direction tangible.
Showing Who We Are
For Dirk Bammann, Head of Business Administration and Internal Management at Stadtwerke Wedel, this is also a major challenge – beyond the practical implementation: “We have an incredible number of great starting points for employees, customers, investors and even external service providers. But this diversity and the growing complexity of our business also make it increasingly difficult to communicate who we actually are and what exactly we do,” he explains. “This creates distance both internally and externally. This is not good, because we can only be successful if we manage to win people over and retain them.” That’s why Bammann wanted to take countermeasures and brought Big Pictury and E1 Management Consulting on board, a consulting firm that specializes in management consulting in the energy industry. An important aspect of the project was the further development of existing specialists. “Our goal was to develop an overall picture of the company that transparently shows the areas of responsibility of Stadtwerke Wedel, sharpens the understanding of the individual roles in the company and shows how the individual areas are interrelated,” explains Dirk Bammann. The aim was to make the constantly increasing complexity of the energy industry and the core goals of SW Wedel – customer orientation, locality and sustainability – clear to employees and other stakeholders. “We also wanted to encourage communication, because dialogue is the only way to achieve improvements, develop visions for the future and generate ideas for optimization.”
The Big Picture
The desire to show an overall picture of the Wedel municipal utilities was meant quite literally – and this is precisely where Big Pictury comes into play. The Hamburg-based company visualizes complex relationships and counts numerous major players, including in the energy market, among its customers. The idea for this very specific service arose from a project with Lufthansa – and from a children’s book concept, as managing director Wolf Wienecke reports: “If you want to show children what happens in a zoo, a fire station or a hospital , who has which task and how it is all interwoven, you look at a book with children – and you will see that they immediately engage with it, spontaneously understand a lot, but also develop questions and new ideas.” This is precisely what companies and organizations want to achieve in their internal and external communication. “We have further developed the concept and noticed that it actually works – regardless of whether you simply want to give the respective target groups an overall view of a company’s structures and processes, explain a change process or support the strategic development of the business,” says Wienecke. In the meantime, Big Pictury has professionalized the implementation to such an extent that the respective “big picture” can be developed with a very manageable investment of time and money.
Implementation in a Short Time
The project also only required a few resources at Stadtwerke Wedel. “A few workshops were held to analyze the existing status quo, the DNA of Stadtwerke Wedel and their vision for the future of the company,” reports Dirk Bammann. For example, the core processes of Stadtwerke Wedel along the entire value chain, i.e. generation, technology, trade, sales including services, commercial service, metering point operation, etc., were identified and target customers clearly named. Since all of the municipal utility’s processes are ultimately geared towards these customers, many scenes with private and business customers were created during this process. “These illustrate the services that the individual departments provide for our customers, who is involved and how it all fits together,” explains Bammann. In addition, the main local buildings and areas were identified for the images and recreated using big pictures. All departments appear in the presentation and all were involved in the implementation from the start – after all, all employees should be able to see themselves in the big picture. Due to the high workload at Stadtwerke Wedel, Big Pictury and E1 took over the moderation as well as the preparation and follow-up. The actual project team was only involved when absolutely necessary. “Working with visual components also facilitates such processes,” reports Wolf Wienecke. Change requests, for example, could be easily and specifically discussed and implemented on a picture. All in all, the development work has already had a positive impact, as Dirk Bammann confirms: “The fact that our own work suddenly appears as a scene in the Big Picture of the Wedel municipal utilities has really had an immediate effect on our colleagues. They felt valued and part of a larger whole,” he reports. Many things have become clear and a lively exchange has begun immediately.
Illustration and Starting Point for a Conversation
Today, the Big Picture is displayed in the form of large-format printouts in many of the Stadtwerke Wedel’s business premises and customer center. “People keep coming back to the poster, engaging with the content, understanding and marveling at all the things we do, or asking questions – that’s exactly what we wanted to achieve,” says Dirk Bammann, pleased. The customer advisors also used the big picture to explain connections and services. In fact, the “Wimmelbild” has proven itself practically everywhere that representatives of Stadtwerke Wedel want to explain the company and its tasks in external contacts. “Whether in job interviews, in cooperation with service providers, at appointments with business customers or public events – most people we talk to are not experts in the energy industry,” says Dirk Bammann. “The visualization helps us a lot.” In addition, the big picture is attracting attention and interest in social media and in the context of current campaigns.
Dynamic Planning Aid
The Big Picture is also particularly helpful for internal development and digitization projects, reports Bammann. “For example, if we are planning a new service or a new division, the big picture is very useful for discussing where we can fit it in, who needs to be involved, and so on.” The same applies to changes in internal processes or in the development of specialists. “And the best thing is: everyone involved always speaks up immediately, develops ideas and makes suggestions – that’s a huge benefit.” Once changes have been decided on or new activities implemented, the image can be quickly adapted, as Wolf Wienecke adds. The graphics are modular in structure, and image libraries already exist for many of them. The big picture is therefore just as open and flexible as the company that uses it.
“Our employees are thrilled. The complexity of our industry and the range of tasks of the municipal utilities could be visibly reduced with the ‘big picture’.”
Dirk Bamann, Head of Business Administration and Internal Management, Wedel Municipal Works
Many thanks to Petra Quenel from 50,2 Magazine for writing this guest article.