As of May 2023, FLO has more than 90,000 charging stations in North America and over 220,000 members who use its network and charge their vehicles more than one million times each month!
In order to maintain its growth pace and be able to meet ever-increasing demand, FLO wanted to set up an IT department. That’s when David MacDonald comes into the picture. He started at FLO in 2017. His challenge: to set up the company’s IT department and make it a partner in accelerating the company’s growth. When he was hired, the company had a little more than 70 employees and today they are more than 550 — an average of 150 new hires each year!
Here are some observations: theuptime rateof their stations, that is the availability rate of their charging stations, is 98%. When a problem occurs with one of their stations, an error message is sent directly to the control center in real time. A full team is dedicated to monitoring FLO stations across North America. In some cases, a team must be sent on site to repair the station. That’s also the beauty of the digital transformation carried out by FLO: with the support of the software and data management systems used, their teams are autonomous and can at any time access the hardware data necessary to resolve various issues remotely.
The audience present at the conference held in Groupe Zulu’s offices quickly understood that data is at the heart of digital transformation. Data quality is paramount since it enables making the best business decisions that will have a significant impact on the company’s growth and development. At FLO, many critical data are generated in an emerging market. Each charging station is aIoT deviceand each session is a specific data point. The importance of documenting everything and keeping the data clean is clear, which led the company to implement processes to help ensure data consistency, while respecting the various laws related to corporate data management.
FLO aims to bedata-driven, which consists of making strategic decisions based on analysis and interpretation of data. This approach also allows examining and organizing the data in order to better understand its consumers and customers, based on four pillars:
- Capacity: companies need to have the right resources as well as a team that knows how to properly manage data and extract insights from it;
- Technology: companies must equip themselves with technology that is simple yet reliable for the data management process;
- Quality: it is necessary to be able to measure data quality, which is one of the most difficult challenges for a company.
- Governance: one must be able to manage data quality efficiently to facilitate the work of the various internal teams.
David then addressed the topic ofdata-awareness, which is one of the main notions addressed internally by the charging station company. Mentioning thatdata-awarenesswas one of the priorities vis-à-vis its employees, the internal newsletter as well as their intranet page on SharePoint make sure to inform their employees, across all departments, of the various changes related to the company’s data management.
More information about FLO
Founded in 2009 and established in Quebec, FLO’s mission is to combat climate change and accelerate EV adoption by offering EV drivers the most reliable charging experience. As a vertically integrated designer and operator of EV charging systems, FLO offers one of the most comprehensive networks in North America, which grows year after year.
More information about Groupe Zulu
Groupe Zulu emphasizes knowledge transfer through training. It believes that the success of a project is measured by the adoption of new solutions by every team member. Thanks to their human, partner-success-focused and collaborative approach, Groupe Zulu ensures it is a partner of choice in data management and stands out for its attentiveness and respect for corporate culture.
