Operations · 2024
Turning a cost center into an advantage
Lumen Energy
−22%
Cost to serve
+19pts
First-time fix
<12 mo
Payback
Overview
A cost-to-serve and performance program that reset the economics of a utility's field-service and back-office operations.
The challenge
Lumen's service costs were rising faster than its regulated revenue, back-office processes were manual and error-prone, and leadership had no reliable line of sight into where money was being spent to serve which customers.
Our approach
We built an activity-based cost-to-serve model, redesigned field scheduling and the back-office process map, and prioritized a set of automation opportunities by hard payback. We ran the first wave with the client's own teams so the capability stayed in the building.
The outcome
Cost to serve fell 22% while first-time-fix rates improved, and automation removed the bulk of manual back-office rework. The program paid back inside a year and became the template for two adjacent operating regions.
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