A paperless electric company was unheard of - until now: Generating cost savings and sustainability in the energy sector

Industry

Energy

Challenge

Managing extensive paperwork required to meet consumer and government regulatory requirements on a monthly basis

Solution

Iron Mountain Insight Content Management solution

Value

• Accrues cost savings via more efficient, paperless processes
• Speeds up processes with automated, digitized document management
• Reduces dependency on paper forms to achieve sustainability goals

Uludağ Electricity, formerly Limak Uludağ Electricity, is one of the largest retail companies in Turkey, providing electricity distribution and retail services to the South Marmara Region. Overall, it serves three million subscribers and a population of five million across the provinces of Bursa, Balıkesir, Çanakkale, and Yalova. In 2022, the company was acquired by Actis, an infrastructure investment company with a particular interest in developing new technologies such as distributed generation, electric vehicle (EV) charging, and digitization.

Being an electrical distributor and retailer means that Uludağ Electricity has one foot in the public sector and one in the private sector. Regulations dictate that the company send notices to their millions of customers every month, and submit regular paperwork and notices to the government agencies that support them. Day-today, this means generating mounds of paperwork.

In 2010, Uludağ Electricity set out to digitally transform its paper-based system. After reviewing available information management vendors, Iron Mountain and its capabilities stood above the rest. Together, the two companies developed a solution to automate Uludağ Electricity’s paper-based processes into a fully integrated digital environment. Now, the company can easily generate electronic notices and forms, and automatically send them to their millions of constituents and government stakeholders. Over the last decade, Uludağ Electricity’s new platform has helped them accrue cost savings, improve operational sustainability, and speed their processes significantly.

Eliminating paper means saving money

When Uludağ Electricity started using the Iron Mountain Insight Content Management solution in 2012, its primary goal was to help unlock digital transformation. In pursuing this goal, it also discovered that the removal of manual, paper-based processes yielded significant cost savings throughout the business. As a reference point, in the United States, organizations spend over 120 billion USD per year on printed forms. But many of those forms — 7.5% at an average company — are eventually lost.¹

¹ https://www.tonerbuzz.com/facts-about-paper/

Employees subsequently spend hours searching for missing information, which translates into additional costs.

The Iron Mountain Insight Content Management solution helped Uludağ Electricity overcome these cost challenges by ensuring that the organization’s documents and correspondence were digitized, organized, and managed throughout their full lifecycle, from creation to archiving or disposal. Customdesigned workflows automatically generate and send paper forms and correspondence via the integrated system. And team members can easily and securely search for business-critical and account-related documents anytime, anywhere.

“We have made substantial savings by using this digital platform in all our correspondence with public institutions, and in letters of reply to our customers. We can see these savings very clearly when we measure our annual paper print-outs,” explained Ali Erman Aytac, General Manager of Uludağ Electricity.

Going paperless for the earth

Pursuing a green operating model is a lofty goal for any organization. But for a utility company whose entire business was built on paperbased communications, it’s especially ambitious. Despite the challenges, that’s exactly what the team at Uludağ Electricity set out to do.

Reducing its dependency on paper forms and correspondence was a key step in achieving sustainability goals. “We are a company that is very sensitive about our carbon footprint and our paper footprint alike,” said Aytac. Iron Mountain has helped Aytac and the team achieve their sustainability goals by scanning and digitizing existing paper documents and automating document-centric processes like correspondence and form generation. A digital document management system offers end-to-end organization of all company resources in a searchable repository.

With the new processes, the team has been able to transform traditionally paper-heavy and cumbersome processes into transparent digital workflows. “The research done by Iron Mountain has shown quantitatively that we have made significant contributions to the environment in the areas of carbon dioxide, trees, water, and solid waste,” said Aytac. “As we transfer both our documents and our processes to the system, we expect to increase these numbers much more, and to reduce our carbon and paper footprints to zero.”

For paper documents the company still has to generate, Uludağ Electricity has a robust recycling program. Iron Mountain also supports these efforts through its Secure Shredding program, which recycles all collected paper while supporting compliance with federal, state, and industry regulations. The team’s efforts have paid off both in terms of meeting internal goals, and in earning external recognition for their efforts. Uludağ Electricity received the Best Social Responsibility Award at the 3rd Energy and Natural Resources Summit of Turkey for its paper recycling programs.

Increasing speed through digital transformation

One of the key outcomes Uludağ Electricity has achieved through its partnership with enVision is an enterprise-wide increase in efficiency. Since all relevant paperwork is now stored in a secure platform, employees no longer waste time looking through paper files for information. “We can also find any document we need very quickly,” explained Aytac. “From time to time we receive requests from public institutions or other bodies for information about our customers. In these cases, our colleagues are able to find the required information about the customer in question and conduct the necessary assessment very quickly.”

Seamless two-way integration capabilities with other enterprise business intelligence and email systems ensure that stakeholders have access to the information they need whenever and wherever they need it. Security features like document access control, version control, and audit trails help protect confidential information. These features also provide the team access to only the most relevant data, so they can do their jobs as quickly and effectively as possible.

Learn more about Iron Mountain  content-management.

Contact Iron Mountain to learn how energy companies can boost sustainability, reduce expenditures, and accelerate innovation.