You may have seen Rob Kerr’s recent email lauding Mandy Dainty and her half-hourly data team for bringing us out of ‘EFR’.
You may also have not had the faintest clue what it was all about.
Fortunately, one of the editorial team also happens to work on the half-hourly side of Supplier Hub, so here’s Mike Fenn to fill in the blanks.
First things first, what is ‘EFR’?
‘EFR’ stands for ‘Error and Failure Resolution’. If a regulatory body, in this instance Elexon, finds Total to be under-performing in any area, they ask us to submit an EFR plan for how we’re going to turn things around.
So where were we falling short?
In Supplier Hub our performance is largely judged on what proportion of the energy used by all our customers is submitted as ‘actual’ data, as opposed to estimated data (which is received when there is a meter fault). The industry requirement is 99% actual, and while Total have been performing consistently better than the industry average for years, we were struggling to match the high standards set by Elexon.
What was the turning point?
Shortly after I started as a temp, Total made the decision that Operations would not be moved overseas, and so Mandy petitioned Rob and the other SMTs for fixed-term and permanent contracts in the Redhill office, emphasising the importance of sticking to our EFR plan. Supplier Hub had previously suffered due to a relatively high turnover of short-term staff, but now Mandy was able to build a dedicated team who were invested in the success of the company.
How have we pulled the numbers up?
The short answer is: hard work. I think we have more open CQMS queries than any other department (my worklist was close to 350 at one point), and Mandy’s regular bribes of Oreo cheesecake certainly had an impact too.
Of course, the reality is more complicated and is truly a company-wide effort. We’ve improved our reporting with the help of IT, so we catch more faults more quickly; the Sales teams are constantly adding greater volumes of energy to our portfolio, proportionally increasing the recorded ‘actual’ data; the Registrations team have been streamlining their processes so sites can be added more smoothly; and Major Business are helping to put us in touch with more of our customers than ever before to resolve their data issues.
What does it mean to be coming off EFR?
It’s a great relief, and very satisfying to see everyone’s tremendous effort pay off. However, in a way it is just the first step. Our aim is not to maintain performance levels, but to build on them. I mentioned previously that we have long been above the industry average, which is true of many of our performance areas. Now we want to be industry leaders, and we have everything we need to get there.
