Propelling Exceptional Customer Experiences through Meralco’s Data Driven Digital Transformation

More and more, organizations are increasing their online presence, moving to mobile and digitizing faster to conduct business and better serve the customers. Recognizing this trend, Meralco embarked on a Customer Centric and Digital Transformation journey in 2020 with a solid Data Driven strategy to govern, capture, understand, and leverage on data to further level up operations and customer experience.

This clearly resonates the strategic direction of Meralco’s President and CEO Atty. Ray C. Espinosa to elevate utilization of data and technology to advance the Company’s goals of delivering value to the business and providing excellent customer service.

Powering Customer Centricity through Data

Meralco’s data-driven strategy was designed to integrate governance, processes, technology, and data into an informative, actionable layer across the organization.

In 2020, the governance structure was formally established which included Data Governance Council, Data Management Working Group and the Data Community representing different business domains across Meralco such as customer, network, and shared services. The operating model and sustained enablement of data stewards and analysts through training and mentoring were key drivers in promoting awareness and how best to harness data assets.

In 2021, Meralco launched the Meralco Data Platform (MDP) that allows the company to further improve customer experience, service delivery and operational efficiency.

MDP, the technology enabler of the utility’s data driven transformation, serves as the unified business intelligence and analytics platform that leverages on Meralco data to extract information and insights. This addresses Meralco’s growing data requirements and provides the capability to manage data more efficiently by automating data processing activities that involve massive volumes of information from billing and payment platforms, Meralco online channels, electric distribution, and supply chain management systems, among others.

It also enables the creation of management and operational dashboards and insights crucial for business decision making such as customer service applications, which in turn empowers responsible Meralco offices to immediately act on applications to ensure timely energization of customers, improving turnaround time. The availability of in-depth analysis of customer inquiries and complaints also enables Meralco to continuously improve customer satisfaction levels. 

Recently, Meralco launched its management dashboard called M-Wing, a single-source, on-line and interactive reporting of key performance indicators accessible via mobile anytime, anywhere, any device. These business performance reports are presented internally in Meralco and to the Board, as well as externally to investors and the media.

Powered by MDP, M-Wing enables digitalization efforts towards improving efficiency of data processing and report generation.

“M-Wing serves as a vehicle to provide better and greater range or view of our performance targets,” said Maria Luisa V. Alvendia, Meralco First Vice President and Chief of Staff to the President & CEO and Supply Chain Advisor.

Meralco also leveraged data science and analytic models with direct positive impact toward customer service experience. For instance, its implementation of more effective predictive analysis leads to faster identification of distribution transformers needing rehabilitation, resulting in the prevention of outages to almost 200,000 customers in 2021.

Data as Growth Enabler

Meralco continues to see digital transformation with data in mind as a key enabler across business units, allowing Meralco to deliver more value through greater understanding, alignment, and use of data.

Through its Analytics and Data Communities of Practice, Meralco is geared to further empower and advance the organization in its data management journey.

In partnership with Dell Technologies, Talend, Cloudera, and Micro-D International, Inc., Meralco’s successful implementation of the state-of-the-art MDP not only replaces the legacy data warehouse systems but also provides data discovery, exploration, and self-service solutions to strategic and operational data management pain points of Meralco.

“By enabling and unlocking intelligence and insights across Meralco, we can bring to light how and where to drive exceptional customer service, streamline internal operations, and create opportunities for innovation – fully recognizing the power of data as an enabler to business growth,” said Rocky D. Bacani, Meralco First Vice President and Head of Information, Communication, Technology and Transformation.