How Octopus Energy automated its credit performance review cycle for faster, more actionable insights

Introduction

Octopus Energy is a global clean energy tech business that is revolutionizing the energy industry. Founded in the UK in 2016, Octopus Energy has rapidly become a force to be reckoned with. Their mission: to make energy fair, clean, and simple for everyone using cutting-edge technology. Octopus Energy powers over 7.7 million households globally and is committed to building a sustainable energy system for the future. What sets them apart? It’s not just about offering the cheapest deals; it’s their relentless focus on customer service, transparency, and innovation. Octopus Energy’s commitment to do right by its customers and society drives its success.

Key result

• Enabled the Credit Risks team to move away from a manual, time-consuming, and error-prone credit performance review process to an automated process.
• Reduced the time spent on mundane, repetitive tasks by at least 80% through automation. This means more time to consider, analyze, and interrogate the data, leading to more informed decision-making.

The Importance of credit analytics at Octopus Energy

Credit Risk is a part of the CFO org and plays a pivotal role in Octopus Energy’s operations. As an energy supplier, most of Octopus’ customers receive energy on credit. Unless they have a prepayment meter, they use energy first and pay the bill afterward. Here’s why credit analytics matters:

• Risk Assessment: By analyzing credit data, they assess the financial risk associated with each customer. It helps them determine creditworthiness, set appropriate payment terms, and manage potential defaults.
• Preventing Debt: Credit analytics informs the optimal amount a customer needs to pay via their monthly direct debit, to prevent a buildup of debt that can be difficult to repay.
• Customer Support: When customers face financial difficulties, credit analytics helps them identify those in need. They can then provide extra support, flexible payment options, and prevent disconnections.
• Operational Efficiency: Efficient credit management ensures smooth operations, reduces bad debt, and allows them to focus on delivering outstanding service.

Despite using Tableau for dashboarding purposes, the Credit Risk team, led by Ivan Lourie, was still spending hours building their credit performance reviews and leadership reporting, doing exports and taking screenshots from Tableau to include in their PowerPoint and Google Slides presentations. They were seeking a way to streamline their credit analytics reporting process by directly embedding Tableau visualizations into their slide decks and documents. By utilizing Rollstack, Octopus Energy was able to achieve this, embedding Tableau visualizations directly into PowerPoint and Google Slides, thereby fully automating their leadership reporting process.

The solution

Rollstack was the perfect fit for Octopus Energy’s problem. It enabled the Credit Risk team to leverage their existing Tableau assets without the need to rebuild anything or start afresh. Utilizing Rollstack's automated and scheduled updates, Ivan's team was able to produce their reports in a timely manner, fully automating the process each month well ahead of their leadership meeting committees.

Results

Immediately after implementing Rollstack, the Octopus Energy team reduced the time spent on mundane, repetitive tasks by at least 80% through automation. This means more time to consider, analyze, and interrogate the data, leading to more informed decision-making.