Electricity North West power up their bid writing
Electricity North West is one of 14 distribution network operators in the UK. From the picturesque Lake District through to the bustling city of Manchester, Electricity North West keep the power flowing to 2.4 million homes and businesses, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
With an ambitious plan to lead the north west of England to net zero by 2038, Electricity North West is dramatically changing the region’s electricity infrastructure into a smart and flexible electricity distribution system to power the north west’s future.
Maintaining an electricity supply across a network that includes 13,000km of overhead power lines and more
than 44,000km of underground electricity cables is no easy task – and something Electricity North West
couldn’t do without its network of external partners.
In the same way power needs to flow through the electricity network, it’s essential for information to flow
easily between all parties to ensure a smooth and consistent service.
Without a dedicated system in place, Electricity North West made best use of patching together different
applications. They used SharePoint internally, but that didn’t work with external partners which meant they
had to rely on email and data transfer programmes.
However, this didn’t provide one central location for everyone to edit documents with full version control
– which resulted in the team having to manually manage everyone’s amendments which was difficult
and inefficient.
They needed a solution that would be the conductor for collaboration and create positive charges to power the north west.
With an ambitious plan to lead the north west of England to net zero by 2038, Electricity North West is dramatically changing the region’s electricity infrastructure into a smart and flexible electricity distribution system to power the north west’s future.
Maintaining an electricity supply across a network that includes 13,000km of overhead power lines and more
than 44,000km of underground electricity cables is no easy task – and something Electricity North West
couldn’t do without its network of external partners.
In the same way power needs to flow through the electricity network, it’s essential for information to flow
easily between all parties to ensure a smooth and consistent service.
Without a dedicated system in place, Electricity North West made best use of patching together different
applications. They used SharePoint internally, but that didn’t work with external partners which meant they
had to rely on email and data transfer programmes.
However, this didn’t provide one central location for everyone to edit documents with full version control
– which resulted in the team having to manually manage everyone’s amendments which was difficult
and inefficient.
They needed a solution that would be the conductor for collaboration and create positive charges to power the north west.
Huddle has been an invaluable addition to our team. The time it has saved compared to our previous, more manual processes has made a real impact on the way we work. Huddle plays a key role in maintaining excellent relationships with our external partners, they are equally as complimentary about Huddle and enjoy using it just as much as we do.
The solution
Having used Ideagen Huddle previously with the Energy Networks Association, Geraldine Paterson, Innovation
Manager at Electricity North West suggested it as a solution straight away and the company’s IT department
agreed to implement Huddle.
Various teams within Electricity North West use Ideagen Huddle in different ways to achieve their objectives, ranging from an ad-hoc basis for completing funding bids, through to a daily project management tool once projects are live.
Each project has its own workspace with a dedicated workspace manager responsible for controlling access
and permissions, and internally, each team has its own workspace to provide an area to keep their files and folders separate from the rest of the business.
The implementation ran smoothly, thanks to the Electricity North West’s team embracing the training provided to them, supported by a dedicated workspace within Ideagen Huddle proving future reference materials.
For the bid writing team, using Ideagen Huddle has improved the process of responding to bids by taking out the frustrating manual admin tasks that are prone to causing blocks and may affect the quality of final submissions.
In seconds, users can pinpoint what they’re looking for using advanced search tools, request files from external partners as easily as they can their colleagues and everyone working on the bid collaborate in real-time using Huddle’s comments and approvals tools
One feature in particular that has made a real difference is Huddle’s automatic version control. The amount of
documents needed and partners involved in Electricity North West’s bid creation created a hugely admin-intense task of collating comments and amendments, chasing updates and checking everyone is working on the same version.
Now, hours of time are saved and everyone enjoys a much more streamlined experience to achieve excellent results.
Geraldine said “Huddle has been an invaluable addition to our team. The time it has saved compared to our
previous, more manual processes has made a real impact on the way we work.
Huddle plays a key role in maintaining excellent relationships with our external partners, they are equally as complimentary about Huddle and enjoy using it just as much as we do”.
Seeing the benefits enjoyed by Electricity North West’s innovation team, other teams within the business are now looking at how Huddle can help them contribute to the mission to reach net zero by 2038
The solution
Having used Ideagen Huddle previously with the Energy Networks Association, Geraldine Paterson, Innovation
Manager at Electricity North West suggested it as a solution straight away and the company’s IT department
agreed to implement Huddle.
Various teams within Electricity North West use Ideagen Huddle in different ways to achieve their objectives, ranging from an ad-hoc basis for completing funding bids, through to a daily project management tool once projects are live.
Each project has its own workspace with a dedicated workspace manager responsible for controlling access
and permissions, and internally, each team has its own workspace to provide an area to keep their files and folders separate from the rest of the business.
The implementation ran smoothly, thanks to the Electricity North West’s team embracing the training provided to them, supported by a dedicated workspace within Ideagen Huddle proving future reference materials.
For the bid writing team, using Ideagen Huddle has improved the process of responding to bids by taking out the frustrating manual admin tasks that are prone to causing blocks and may affect the quality of final submissions.
In seconds, users can pinpoint what they’re looking for using advanced search tools, request files from external partners as easily as they can their colleagues and everyone working on the bid collaborate in real-time using Huddle’s comments and approvals tools
One feature in particular that has made a real difference is Huddle’s automatic version control. The amount of
documents needed and partners involved in Electricity North West’s bid creation created a hugely admin-intense task of collating comments and amendments, chasing updates and checking everyone is working on the same version.
Now, hours of time are saved and everyone enjoys a much more streamlined experience to achieve excellent results.
Geraldine said “Huddle has been an invaluable addition to our team. The time it has saved compared to our
previous, more manual processes has made a real impact on the way we work.
Huddle plays a key role in maintaining excellent relationships with our external partners, they are equally as complimentary about Huddle and enjoy using it just as much as we do”.
Seeing the benefits enjoyed by Electricity North West’s innovation team, other teams within the business are now looking at how Huddle can help them contribute to the mission to reach net zero by 2038
Could Ideagen Huddle become your gateway to improved document control?
Discover how you can supercharge your every day processes to save time, just like Electricity North West.
Ideagen Huddle offers dedicated project workspaces and portals for external collaboration, all in a highly secure single-source-of-truth environment. Request a demo.
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