Maintenance employee at the Termocandelaria Substation
Maintenance employee at the Termocandelaria Substation
Innovation is a central component of the corporate strategy of Grupo Energía Bogotá. For this reason, we established as strategic priority active monitoring and assessment of the viability of using new technologies to create or strengthen products, services or processes of the organization, always based on principles of ethics and responsibility towards our communities and strategic partners.
Our objective is to consolidate an innovation model based on technological development in areas that are close to our core businesses and in which the Group has unique capabilities:
This strategic pillar of innovation is relevant for the search of opportunities that enable leveraging the corporate strategy. It has also produced greater integration, relationships and connection with the regional and national innovation ecosystem, in order to have access to available technical and scientific capabilities.
We developed GEB's innovation model as an articulator and integrator of the different innovation initiatives that arise in the affiliates, with the following objectives:
To speed up initiatives that focus on the core businesses of GEB and its affiliates.
Leverage fulfillment of the Group’s strategic objectives.
Promote efficiency, competitiveness and sustainability in the Group’s businesses.
Make a difference through transforming results.
Have an impact on the Company’s culture and workplace environment.
We are aligned with the Group’s Sustainability Model, to contribute to the creation of value for stakeholders through innovation, in the framework of the Sustainable Development Goals in three dimensions: socio-environmental, governance and innovation.
With the aim of ensuring operating excellence, we defined the phases of the innovation process. Starting in the planning stage, we ensure that the proposed innovation initiatives are aimed at achieving transforming results for the organization and to ensure the efficient use of resources, and company-university linkages to ensure the development of professionals who will contribute to the promotion and identification of new opportunities.
Our structure involves the management team, technical leaders and inter-disciplinary teams, in order to bring together the bodies that will ensure the availability of economic, technical, human and physical resources to make the proposed innovation initiatives viable.
The development of GEB's innovation model was one of the major achievements of the year, and we will begin its implementation in 2021.
We initiated an innovation strengthening strategy in three fronts:
GEB's innovation model, developed jointly with the Corporate, Transmission and affiliate teams. We also developed the first validation stages for its implementation in 2021.
We developed the procedures for innovation initiative planning, selection and prioritization, assessment, analysis of the environment, as well as forms and management indicators for the Group.
We took on a more active role in the innovation ecosystem, in venues such as the Innovation Committee of ANDI. We also discussed and managed agreements with different public and private institutions to develop innovation initiatives in ANDI + País, which seeks to sponsor companies based in Bogotá to add depth to the innovation ecosystem and support a strategic initiative in 2021.
We participate in events related to innovation in the electricity and gas industry, 1. searching for companies and startups that have disruptive proposals for our businesses.
We defined four indicators for the innovation process:
Annual growth in the generation of ideas, to measure the number of ideas generated compared to the previous year.
Efficiency in the use of the innovation budget, compared to the development of initiatives.
Level of implementation of the ideas, to measure this achievement compared to the number of ideas generated.
Level of performance of the ideas, to measure this achievement compared to the number of selected ideas.
We start out with a positive balance: 33 innovation ideas generated, 17 ideas pre-selected and 6 ideas prioritized. In the last quarter, we explored two of these prioritized ideas: One focuses on surveillance and coordination to enable new businesses based on a new market entry, such as hydrogen; the other initiative, for which a financial assessment was made, seeks to create a Policy of Owner Associations to improve community relations and create a different arrangement of shared value with them.
We established that the innovation projects undertaken by GEB must have a minimum IRR of between 10 and 15 %.
In the case of our affiliates, Contugas implemented a web-based log for the Control Center, which enables recording all activities related to the distribution system and to perform searches with ease of access for preventive maintenance in the Ica region.
In the long term, we will focus on the development of projects with tested technologies and successful cases of implementation in other markets.
Move forward in our GEB innovation road map, phase I of which will last until 2025, with two prioritized initiatives: definition of the innovation strategy and focus on tested technologies that complement the businesses in which the Group has a unique role for their deployment in Colombia.
Perform technological surveillance and competitive intelligence on new technologies in the development phase.
Support the entire process for the digital consolidation and transformation of GEB and its affiliates.
Develop, in partnership with Universidad de los Andes, open innovation initiatives starting in the first half of 2021.
Consolidate our participation in the Más País (A Bigger Country) innovation project, jointly with ANDI and the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, which will provide us access to high-level advisory to strengthen our innovation strategy and receive co-financing for the implementation of a strategic innovation project.
Our subsidiary Cálidda will start up in 2021 a pilot program to explore and implement innovative initiatives. We will explore B2B and B2C commercial initiatives (financing for natural gas vehicle and micro-insurance), as well as the development of fiber optics, the App Industrias project, the Toma de Lectura Remota (Remote Meter Reading Project).