David Legendre, Chief Data Officer at Engie France, explains how launching Artefact’s AI Data Factory is helping take new technologies from the planning stage to reality faster than ever.

The AI Data Factory dedicated to Engie ‘s data transformation

The challenge for a new type of energy provider

ENGIE is a global leader in low-carbon energy and services, dedicated to the transition to a carbon-neutral world. Today, Engie provides competitively-priced electricity, gas and utilities to 10 million French homes. David Legendre puts it this way:

“Before, Engie was an energy vendor and was paid for that. Today, Engie helps clients consume less and is paid for that.”

But as with any company, retaining competitive edge means offering constant improvements.

Engie knew they needed a partner to help them get out of “laboratory mode” and into production mode, and that’s where Artefact stepped in.

“We struggled to expand our technology on a daily basis and over a long period of time. So, we chose Artefact to help us solve the issues that had the most importance from a business point of view”
explains David.
“For example, if a customer wanted to subscribe to an Engie offer, we needed a way to auto-fill his information to avoid errors. Improvements like these make all our customers’ lives easier.”

The solution: a new type of AI Factory

Artefact consulted with Engie, and together we came up with a new methodology: we decided to configure the Engie AI Data Factory like a well-organised restaurant kitchen, where everyone has a specific role to play and everything has its place.

“In a kitchen, on one side, you have all the utensils – the data tools – needed to carry out our subjects”, says David. “On the other side, you have the recipes. Based on an ideation system, we identify use cases and prioritise them. And then there’s the brigade, the team that whips everything into shape.”

The “brigade” is our feature team, composed of IT, legal, data and digital experts from both Artefact and Engie and all other stakeholders. Working together, we prioritised creativity, rapidly industrialisable recipes, and cross-company support to ensure adoption and acculturation.

Results: Multiple successes each “season” 

For David, the AI Data Factory is run a little like a TV show:

“We’ve just finished the first season, and it was a great success.”

We’ve been collaborating with Engie for several years now, and thanks to our new system of working with them, Artefact identified four important use cases for Engie:

  • Marketing (called e=mc2): personalisation of marketing actions
  • Operations: maintenance of heating systems, for example
  • Satisfaction: call centre support
  • Customer experience: use of visual recognition and pre-fill of certain fields of Engie service subscription quotes

Artefact supported and challenged Engie throughout the season. We helped them create a framework and a methodology designed to be easily shareable throughout the entire company.

“We’re meeting again today as part of season 2 and have many more requests than we have the ability to produce – which is proof of the success of this AI Data Factory. The word that comes to mind when you think of Artefact is ‘acceleration’ – when it comes to the topics that matter”,
concludes David

47% of executives find AI hard to integrate with existing processes and systems.

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