Budget Thuis enhances customer experience with (Gen) AI
Budget Thuis is a leading energy and telecom services provider in the Netherlands, committed to providing reliable services at affordable prices. Serving more than a million customers, Budget Thuis holds a prominent position in the industry. Recognizing the substantial potential of Generative AI to enhance internal processes and the customer experience, Budget Thuis faced challenges in realizing its value independently. Therefore, they asked SparkOptimus’ support in identifying and prioritizing company-specific use cases, rapidly testing and proving the value by collaboratively building, testing, and improving MVPs, and designing an organizational setup for long-term, sustainable (Gen) AI innovation.
"Although we usually prefer to do as much as possible in-house, Spark's practical support enabled them to blend into our teams easily. They made Generative AI easy to understand and focused on practical, effective results."
We kicked off the project with a one-week value scan, collectively identifying 50 Generative AI value cases. From this longlist, we prioritized three use cases to start testing in across-functional pilot team, and further selected 12 use cases to implement with off-the-shelf Gen AI tools.
We then developed the implementation plans and set up the pilot teams to kickstart the development of the pilots. In just 8 weeks, we built and tested the MVP.
Following the successful test-and-learn phase, we developed detailed scaling plans for each pilot project and established a new organizational setup for innovation to enable Budget Thuis to independently replicate this test-and-learn approach for future Generative AI applications.
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During this project, we built successful MVPs for several Gen AI use cases:
Call log automation pilot
We collaboratively developed an MVP tool that accurately transcribes and summarizes customer service & tele sales calls according to a specified format, reducing time spent by agents by as much as 15%. As a byproduct of the Gen AI-based summarization, the quality and consistency of call summaries also improved. Automated call logging enables agents to spend more time on value-added activities, like providing a better customer experience.
Chatbot improvement pilot
We developed a Gen AI tool to identify chatbot improvement areas using large amounts of historic live chat data. The tool categorizes conversations and identifies reasons for customers to escalate to a service agent. Furthermore, the tool also generates typical reasons why customers escalate for each category. This type of analysis, which is virtually impossible to effectively execute without Gen AI, allows the team to rapidly improve the chatbot, reducing escalations, and thus time spend for customer service.
Integrating off-the-shelf tooling
In addition to the pilots, we introduced off-the-shelf Generative AI tooling across key departments. To ensure successful adoption into daily operations, we appointed dedicated ‘champions’, tasked with driving Generative AI within their department. Working closely with these champions, we refined potential use cases, identified suitable tooling, documented best practices, and conducted training sessions for comprehensive adoption and alignment on the way forward.
Organizing for continuous innovation
To meet the challenge of driving continuous innovation in the business, we designed a tailored test-and-learn approach. This involved setting up dedicated cross-functional innovation teams, and implementing a quarterly meeting rhythm for ideation, prioritization, and evaluation of ideas. Altogether, this positions Budget Thuis to autonomously generate, prioritize, test, and expand innovative ideas, unlocking untapped (Generative AI) value!
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Zijerveld (a subsidiary of FrieslandCampina) is one of the largest cheese wholesalers in Europe. Recognizing the vast potential AI can bring to their business, they approached SparkOptimus for a one-week data scan. The scan consisted of identifying and prioritizing potential AI use cases across Zijerveld’s business and creating a first view of business value for selected use cases.
PVH – globally known for its iconic brands Calvin Klein & Tommy Hilfiger – is one of the world’s largest and most admired fashion companies, operating in over 40 countries worldwide.
PVH Europe’s ambition is to transform from a transaction-led fashion wholesaler into a consumer-led, multichannel fashion player with a tripled ecommerce business by 2025. To turn this vision into reality, PVH wants to connect with its consumers “in the moment”, which implies serving consumers in real-time based on their needs. For example, providing real-time transparency on delivery and payment status, offering personalized recommendations, or promptly providing adequate customer support in case of an incident.
PVH asked SparkOptimus to help shape the path to achieve this ambition, and kickstart execution to gain early momentum.
Schneider Electric (SE) is a leading global specialist in energy management and automation, with €34bn in revenue. To better serve its customers, SE launched a B2B online portal, aimed to offer a digital E2E self-service environment where customers of all types can easily search, configure & order products and have direct access to training & customer support. To ensure SE would set the right strategic priorities going forward, they engaged SparkOptimus to independently benchmark their B2B portal against industry competitors and best-practices.
HEINEKEN is the world’s most international brewer, with revenues of over €27bn, brands present in over 180 countries and operations in more than 75 markets. Heineken is a proud and independent global industry leader, with a strong brand portfolio and an extensive sales & distribution network across the globe. Understanding that digitisation is driving a seismic shift in how people connect, consume media and consume products, HEINEKEN launched a broad set of digital initiatives across functions and markets throughout the world, with a view to ‘staying in the game’ and learning along the way.
Acknowledging this promising start, SparkOptimus urged HEINEKEN to fundamentally elevate and accelerate its digital transformation. Committed to accelerating growth in a rapidly changing competitive playing field and driven by the ambition to become the clear winner in beer & cider in a digital age, HEINEKEN asked for SparkOptimus’ support in co-developing a shared vision, strategy, and execution plan with HEINEKEN’s key decision makers: the Executive Team and MDs of HEINEKEN’s largest global Operating Companies.
Together with the Executive Team and key local leadership teams, we co-created a shared vision, strategy and 3-horizon plan for accelerating growth in a digitised world. We also defined what was required to realise this ambition across the globe. After formulating the 3-horizon strategy and plan, HEINEKEN asked SparkOptimus for support with achieving the core components of the plan. As part of that support, HEINEKEN and SparkOptimus jointly embarked on an ambitious, multi-year programme to drive the most exciting, most rewarding but also the most complex ‘pillar’ of the three-horizon plan: digitising HEINEKEN’s B2B Route-to-Market to outlets across the globe (scope of this case study). This represented a significant challenge given HEINEKEN’s decentralised governance model and the large variety of routes-to-market and digital maturities present across different markets.
Heineken Mexico, part of the world’s most international brewer with over 80,000 employees and more than 35 billion in global revenues, was looking to harness the potential of Generative AI (Gen AI) to drive efficiencies and improve customer satisfaction. They wanted to explore AI use cases across their operations and kickstart AI initiatives in key areas like sales and customer service.
A leading Belgian private equity firm approached SparkOptimus to conduct a technology due diligence on an AI-driven media company poised to disrupt its industry. As part of their investment evaluation, they needed a deep dive into the company's use of Generative AI (Gen AI) and the future impact of emerging technologies like OpenAI’s Sora. With this in mind, they sought our expertise to assess the company's technical and data landscape, ensuring they could make an informed investment decision.
De Energiebespaarders embarked on the next phase of growth to realize its ambition of becoming the leading digital contractor for making existing houses more sustainable.
They enlisted our support to co-shape a strategic growth plan, identifying and prioritizing future growth initiatives while determining the organizational, technical, and financial implications of each, providing crucial input for the next funding round.
Shell sought a comprehensive assessment of its Lubricants Marine business and the AccuPort venture.
We established the current baseline, refined and iterated both short-term (MVP) and long-term (vision) propositions and business models, and developed organizational and technological blueprints. We also crafted a rollout strategy and plan, including financials and buy/build decisions, ultimately identifying 8 key initiatives to enhance Shell’s Lubricant Marine business.
