EPM: Example of digitization in Latin America
The business success story of EPM Group, also known as Empresas Públicas de Medellín, is a clear example of how a commitment to digitization can significantly streamline and optimize a company’s business processes.
EPM is a Colombian company dedicated to the provision of residential public services, including electricity, gas, water, and sanitation. In addition, as a business group, it is the parent company of 45 businesses located in Central America, Mexico, Spain, Chile, the United States and Colombia.
From its beginnings in 1955, and well into the second decade of the 2000s, the daily operations of the EPM business group were based on an analog working environment. Thus, the usual tools used by the different departments were the telephone, e-mail, and physical documentation. This caused issues in the day-to-day development of operations, such as task duplication, scattered information, and difficulties in monitoring and analyzing the activities carried out.
Faced with this situation, EPM’s management team decided that the time had come to adopt an enterprise resource planning system that would allow information and processes to be managed automatically. As Juan Guillermo Osorio, head of the Administrative Services and IT Unit, explains, “in order to understand the problems that led the company to contract a solution like AuraQuantic, we have to go back to 2014, when the organization decided to create a shared services center”, to centralize the various administrative or process management services in a specific location.
After analyzing the digital transformation platform market, AuraQuantic was the technology solution selected to undertake its digital transformation process.
The advice and support provided by AURA partner Indepro have been fundamental in the consolidation of the platform implementation process and have enabled EPM to have a fully digitized ERP system. As a result, all the documentation is managed in a centralized and automated manner, guaranteeing its accurate creation, organization, storage, preservation, access, and distribution.
Furthermore, the adoption of a new administrative model based on task self-management by employees, suppliers, and external clients has been another of the benefits obtained with AuraQuantic. The platform provides an immediate link to ongoing digital processes, eliminating the use of paper documentation, and unnecessary travel and reducing waiting times.
Likewise, AuraQuantic has helped EPM achieve other business goals, such as:
- Consolidate, standardize and centralize all transactional activities.
- Implement a transparent and homogeneous service provision model, based on Service Level Agreements (SLAs).
- Optimize the resources used, by incorporating best practices.
- Enable rapid integration with other platforms or software solutions.
- Improve the level of compliance with SLAs.
All these improvements have allowed EPM to develop and establish a culture of continuous improvement across all its processes and services. So much so that, at present, the company is considered one of the largest companies for generating jobs in the Medellín region and a leading example of business digitization.
Finally, and with a view to the coming years, the company’s objective is to “continue exploring the multiple functionalities of AuraQuantic including features that incorporate Artificial Intelligence technology”, explains Melisa Del Carmen Baena Galeano, Human and Organizational Development operator. The goal is to achieve more automated and intelligent processes that in turn empower maximum operational excellence and generate added value for the organization.
