Partners and commissioning: numbers and the human factor

Enel Energia is able to stay close to its customers also thanks to 1,500 partner companies with which it collaborates across the territory and the market. It is a system made up of physical and virtual channels that contribute to sales, customer management and the overall functioning of the organization. The Commissioning Team is responsible for economically enhancing these relationships; today the team is made up of 16 people, but the activity began in 2008 thanks to the vision and commitment of Fabio Manocchi, who came professionally from Sales, and Paola Silvestro, who had a background in Management Control and created the tools to turn that vision into reality.

It is Paola Silvestro herself who tells us this story: «When we started this project, all the supplier remuneration work was done on Excel sheets that only allowed us to make simplified calculations and pay out a token. Twelve years later, we are on the third IT system, processing dozens of different incentives in a flow that year after year has become increasingly complex. There has been constant innovation, but the fundamental objective has not changed: to put partners in a position to work at their best». The vision behind the Commissioning Team was to transform a purely manual process into a system of relationships. The team is the link between Enel Energia and its partners: «Our team also has the purpose of taking care of the partners as businesses, and therefore as economically sensitive entities. We make sure they have all the tools they need for sound business management, everything necessary to work at their best. We act as support and as an interface toward the company's internal structure».

The work of the Commissioning Team essentially consists of two elements: numbers and the human factor. «The data entering the system allows us to evaluate the quality of the partners' work, to encourage growth through increasingly refined and innovative incentives. It is like a large calculator that receives different flows from different systems and processes them together». In this way, commissioning becomes a lever for the development of the entire company, because it makes it possible to identify virtuous behaviors to promote, including the pursuit of lasting and quality relationships with customers. But behind the number flows are relationships with people and partner companies: «They are the living and interesting part of this work», says Paola, «and they are the reason why I have never been bored for a single day all these years». The key to understanding the work of commissioning lies precisely in the word «partner», which carries nuances absent from the simple idea of «supplier». «We are partners because development is mutual. If their work is careful and of high quality, we can grow together, in a virtuous circle». The benefit also reaches the end customer, who always encounters motivated and professional operators.

The delicacy of the commissioning work and the importance of the mutual trust built over the years were seen at the most difficult time for all Italian companies: the national lockdown that began on March 9. This new and unpredictable situation forced partners to operate under completely new conditions, yet they all managed to ensure total continuity of service management for Enel Energia and above all for its customers. Paola Silvestro recounts commissioning during the time of Covid-19: «Even in this case, the partnership relationship worked: they operated under complex conditions, and we quickly developed innovative tools and formulas to stand by their side and support them». Our immediate goal was to maintain the commercial network, identifying commissioning solutions that above all could give partners a perspective and allow them to endure; then there is the broader goal: to put them in a position to have a strong structure to restart, even in a different way in a different world. «This is also the meaning of partnership: you can only come out of the tunnel together».