Powering the future through reinvention

An electrifying transformation

Public Power Corporation (PPC), the biggest electricity provider and third largest employer in Greece, has to do much more than just keep the lights on across the country. PPC’s guiding vision is to power the daily lives of customers—from when they hit snooze in the morning until they charge their phones at bedtime. That’s why PPC is now becoming a digital company through and through, from its advanced production tech and retail stores to all the corporate services that support the organization and its customers.

The company is diversifying into adjacent, non-commodity industries, like electric vehicles infrastructure, fiber and telecom and electronics retail. And its ambitions aren’t limited to Greece; PPC is also looking to become a key source of energy and stability throughout southeastern Europe. That’s ambitious for sure—considering that reinvention wasn’t on PPC’s agenda four years ago.

Fast forward to today, where PPC has completed an impressive, compressed transformation—one that has taken it from being a commodity supplier focused solely on keeping the power flowing, to a completely reinvented organization positioned for new growth. From building a centralized data warehouse to inventing a new KPI to measure digital evolution, PPC has firmly established a continuous reinvention mindset. What’s more, a new emphasis on sustainability and building renewables capacity has also paid off, with a jump of 80% in these areas in just two years. Accenture has been supporting PPC every step in its transformation journey.

New market, new CEO, new aspiration

It all started with a dynamic CEO who took the helm in August 2019 and hired an all-star management team. He also brought in Accenture to help answer the question: What would it take to become a completely digital utility in both the near and longer term?

Once plans were in place, PPC’s success would be powered by the CEO’s embrace of a new Digital Performance Index (DPI) that would guide the company’s transformation. This composite index would chart PPC’s digital evolution away from the status quo, measuring the digitization of processes and systems across all business functions. Even more crucial: the CEO tied every member of the C-suite’s compensation bonus to how much they were able to boost DPI in their departments, incentivizing their contributions to digital reinvention.

In the first year of its application, PPC’s DPI grew by 37%, with 15% growth recorded from 2022 to 2023 as projects entered their complex execution phases. PPC has set explicit targets for continued DPI growth as its leaders embed digital technology throughout the business.

Continuous reinvention powered by people and tech

PPC understood that to keep DPI growing, the IT department had to transition from being an operational support function to the central driver of its digital transformation. To this end, Accenture and PPC concentrated on three areas for improvement: a major cloud migration, which moved 170 applications to the cloud and closed two physical data centers; a new, centralized data warehouse, with 140 terabytes of data analyzed by 750 different reports in PowerBI; and security, with PPC now handling 25,000 security incidents and 360,000 suspicious emails annually.

It was also important for PPC employees to understand the changes and adapt to new ways of working. A Center of Excellence (COE) model now ensures that PPC and Accenture people are working side by side. At the same time, a new Digital Unit (DU) housed at Accenture brings together PPC and Accenture employees to collaborate and learn to execute PPC’s ambitious commercial transformational roadmap. When ready, Accenture will transfer the DU to PPC, where it will serve as a beacon for the rest of the business.

PPC is growing into a nimble, multidivisional company that can adapt to whatever demands arise. With DPI as the north star—and clear growth targets in place—the future is already here for PPC, and it’s looking bright.