AGL Employees Go Digital with New “AGL One” iOS App and SAP BTP

AGL partnered with SAP AppHaus Network member Bourne Digital, part of Accenture, to create the world-first AGL One iOS app. Based on SAP Integration Suite and SAP Extension Suite, the app now brings together AGL’s employee network in a single digital experience. Now they can access the right tool at the right time, every time, from anywhere. The solution, which is powered by SAP Business Technology Platform, recently won a SAP Innovation Award in the category “Transformation Champion”.

AGL is a leading integrated essential service provider, with a proud 184-year history of innovation and a passionate belief in human and technological progress. The company delivers 3.95 million gas, electricity, and telecommunications services to residential, small, and large business, as well as wholesale customers across Australia. AGL also operates Australia’s largest electricity generation portfolio responsible for about 20% of the total electricity capacity of the country.

In June 2019, AGL launched PT3 (People, Process and Performance Transformation), their initiative to unite all AGL sites across corporate and group operations into one technical platform. It also aimed at delivering greater mobility and enabling AGL staff to work flexibly with mobile applications on their phone or tablet. After a first launch, however, user feedback showed the need to further improve the solution and explore ways to better enable employees digitally. AGL decided to examine their employees’ user experience (UX) to ensure a better adoption of the new platform. Clear focus of the new solution should be consolidation and ease of use. After a complete redesign of their mobile interface, AGL wanted to extend the great relationship they already had with their customers also to the people who worked for them, their employees.

AGL consulted with the same firm that helped design their customer experience (CX), SAP AppHaus Network member Bourne Digital. This network is a worldwide community of like-minded SAP-partners who work with customers in a creative environment to make innovation real, following SAP’s Human-Centered Approach to Innovation. As a first step towards the new solution for their employees, AGL tasked an internal service design team with replicating the same service design process for their employees’ mobile app. With the help of their employee experience center, the joint AGL and Bourne Digital project team conducted lifecycle mapping and extensive interviews with staff to discover the following key issues with their existing mobile interface:

• Too many tools in the environment made it hard for the employees to identify the correct tool for each situation.
• The usability of the previous solution wasn’t simple and prevented proficiency.
• The current solution missed data consolidation of several sources.
• Employee engagement was low due to dissatisfaction with the efficiency of the tools.

To meet their employees’ wishes for a straightforward, consolidated, easy to use mobile experience, AGL and Bourne Digital partnered with Apple to create an iOS app called AGL One. The feedback collected in the interviews was used to create a completely redesigned mobile employee interface. Based on SAP Integration Suite and SAP Extension Suite, the app now brings together AGL’s employee network in a single digital experience.

The project team held a number of Design Thinking sessions at Bourne Digital’s AppHaus facility in Melbourne to re-imagine the employee experience. Building on their existing investment in SAP S4/HANA with SAP Business Technology Platform, the AGL One app combines a landscape of more than 300 IT applications into one single interface with only one main login to use. So even when employees want to switch back and forth between apps, they do not have to re-login and remember different passwords every time. Once signed in, the UX itself is very accessible to the average employee, so they don’t have to know specific tool names or apps to use them.

The AGL One built-in capabilities prioritize tasks that are easy to do on the go, such as administrative tasks and approvals. This reduces cycle time on tasks that are often put off and need to be followed up on, making employees’ workdays more productive and efficient. Some of the app’s key features are:

• Quick access to action all purchase order approvals in SAP S/4HANA.
• Assessments of workplace safety and reports possible on the go with the option to use phone camera to add a photo and record safety observations or hazards in SAP S/4HANA.
• Personalization of the homepage for quick access to tools the employee uses most often.
• Desk booking with Desk Locator, especially following the COVID-19 restrictions
• Holiday and leave request entry and management with Workday.
• New appreciation tool “Energise” for colleagues
• AGL news service with talking points, friends and family discounts, and easy access to AGL job boards to be active ambassadors outside the company
• News live feed and integration with “The Source”, AGL’s news and intranet
• Seamless third-party collaborations between SAP backend and Apple user interface

By building an app expressly for its employees, AGL has successfully placed their user experience on the same priority level as its customers’. AGL One ensures a positive, streamlined experience for the employees, whether at the office or in the field. After rolling out the app to their employees, the company has seen a motivation and engagement boost at work for AGL’s employees. After releasing the app in October 2020, the number of downloads speaks for itself: 1600 out of their 3700 employees downloaded the app so far, leading to an adoption rate of nearly 50%.

The innovation power of this application and the whole project was also recognized by the jury of the SAP Innovation Award 2021. The new AGL One app for employees won in the category “Transformation Champion”.