How Romania’s wind power market leader CEZ has modernized its receivables collection.
The CEZ Group relies on the expertise of EOS KSI. Thanks to the careful work of debt collection experts, Romania’s largest producer of green energy has achieved better results year after year.
Between the Danube and the Black Sea, the wind blows on average at a speed of 25 kilometers per hour. But that which causes farmers in the Dobrudja region of Romania problems – i.e. the strong, steady breeze which dries out their fields – makes a harvest of a different kind possible: this has been the home of Europe’s largest onshore wind farm since 2012. Operated by a Romanian subsidiary of the Czech CEZ Group, the project consists of 240 wind turbines covering 72 square kilometers. CEZ Vânzare poured 1.1 billion euros into this mammoth project, thereby becoming the largest investor in the Romanian energy market.
“We are the largest private producer of energy from renewable sources. In this way, we are helping to ensure that Romania complies with the EU directive, according to which 20 percent of energy consumption should come from renewable sources by 2020,” says Cornelia Szabo, the energy supplier’s Executive Director. With a capacity of 600 megawatts, the power plant now supplies more than one million households. When the wind turbines went live on the grid, it meant that about ten percent of the electricity in the country was being generated from renewable sources. In addition to the wind farm, CEZ operates hydro-electric power plants in Romania.
CEZ values transparency and digitization
In addition to green energy, CEZ Vânzare also sells conventional electricity and natural gas. “We supply about 1.3 million private customers and 50,000 small and medium-sized businesses,” says Szabo. The group is furthermore involved at municipal level. In Giurgiţa in the southwest of the country, for example, they modernized street lighting with energy-saving LEDs.
The SMART project is transforming CEZ into an automated, digitized company. One of the results of this is that between 2012 and 2016, the group reduced power outages by half. Customer satisfaction is also of key importance to the company. For CEZ, transparency is part of delivering good service. “We provide our customers with easy-to-understand information on for example billing data, payment methods and energy saving options,” says Szabo.
EOS uses experts with legal training
CEZ Vânzare expects their debt collection service provider to use the same approach in dealing with their customers. The company's receivables management has been in the hands of EOS KSI since 2009. “Our collaboration with CEZ Vânzare started with out-of-court receivables management. It was not long before we also took on debt collection cases that required legal action,” says Cristian Manea, head of the sales team at EOS KSI. The partners have been renewing their contracts every one to two years, following appropriate bidding procedures. EOS KSI has a team of debt collection specialists with legal backgrounds, legal advisers and lawyers working for CEZ Vânzare. They take care of the approximately 3,000 cases of out-of-court debt collection and 100 cases of debt collection involving legal action. “We usually recommend that our customers take legal action if out-of-court collection does not lead to achieving the objective. That is how we get the best results.”
More time for new business
“On average, we solve 30 percent of out-of-court debt collection cases within three months. Our success rate with debt collection involving legal action is on average 20 percent,” says Manea. “The results have been improving with every passing year,” Szabo also praises. “Thanks to the extensive experience and sensitive approach of EOS, these specialists achieve good results even with defaulting payers who are in the midst of bankruptcy proceedings. The chances of success are usually very low in such cases,” says the Executive Director. “And at the end of the day, we can use every minute we don’t need to spend on receivables management to create new business. Overall, thanks to our partnership with EOS KSI, we are in a far better position when it comes to receivables management.”
We use cookies on our website to enable you to have the best possible website visit. These include cookies that are necessary for the operation of the website, those that are only used for anonymous statistical purposes, cookies that are used for comfort settings and cookies that are used to provide you with personalized, interest-based content. You can decide yourself whether you want to allow the use of statistics, comfort, and marketing cookies. In addition, you can change/withdraw your consent at any time by clicking on the Change Cookies settings on the bottom of the website. Further information can be found in our Privacy Policy and Imprint.
Necessary
We use necessary cookies. These cookies are necessary for the operation and the basic functions of the website. In particular, they enable the security-relevant functioning of our website.
You can read about which cookies we use here.
Tool name
Cookieconsent_status
Tool provider
EOS Holding GmbH
Address of tool provider
Steindamm 71, 20099 Hamburg, Germany
Tool description
Essential cookie to save consent banner inputs.
Data processed
None
Purpose of data processing
To save consent
Retention period
60 days
Tool name
Java Session Cookie
Tool provider
EOS Holding GmbH
Address of tool provider
Steindamm 71, 20099 Hamburg
Tool description
Randomly generated session number essential for the proper functioning of the application software.
Data processed
None
Purpose of data processing
Proper functioning of website
Retention period
Session cookie – is deleted after you have closed your browser.
Comfort
If you allow comfort cookies, we can make use of our site easier for you. If you visit our website again to use our services, it will automatically be recognized that you already visited us and the entries and settings you made will automatically be recognized so that you do not have to enter them again.
You can read about which cookies we use here.
Tool name
Visitor
Tool provider
EOS Holding GmbH
Address of tool provider
Steindamm 71, 20099 Hamburg, Germany
Tool description
We use this cookie to make it easier for you to use this website.
Data processed
None
Purpose of data processing
Optimization, improvement of service
Retention period
Session cookie – is deleted after you have closed your browser.
Tool name
NEW_Visitor
Tool provider
EOS Holding GmbH
Address of tool provider
Steindamm 71, 20099 Hamburg, Germany
Tool description
We use this cookie to make it easier for you to use this website.
Data processed
None
Purpose of data processing
Optimization, improvement of service
Retention period
1 day
Statistics
We use statistical cookies to improve our offering and ensure a needs-based design and the continuous optimization of our website.
For this, we collect anonymized data for statistics and analytics, for example, to determine site traffic and user behavior and to adapt and improve our content and the website experience.
You can read about which cookies we use here.
Tool name
nmstat
Tool provider
Siteimprove GmbH
Address of tool provider
Rosenheimer Str. 143 C, 81671 Munich, Germany
Tool description
This cookie contains an ID character string for the current session. It contains non-personally identifiable information about which sub-pages the visitor enters – this information is used to optimize the user experience.
Data processed
None
Purpose of data processing
Analysis, statistics
Retention period
399 days
Tool name
AWSELB
Tool provider
Siteimprove GmbH
Address of tool provider
Rosenheimer Str. 143 C, 81671 Munich, Germany
Tool description
This cookie ensures that all statistics from the same session are captured contiguously.
Data processed
None
Purpose of data processing
Analysis, statistics
Retention period
Session end
Tool name
siteimproveses
Tool provider
Siteimprove GmbH
Address of tool provider
Rosenheimer Str. 143 C, 81671 Munich, Germany
Tool description
This cookie is used to track the sequence of pages viewed by the visitor during the website visit.
Data processed
None
Purpose of data processing
Analysis, website statistics
Retention period
Session cookie – is deleted after you have closed your browser.
Marketing
We use marketing cookies so that we can provide you with relevant and interest-based content when you visit our website.
You can read about which cookies we use here.
Tool name
Facebook Pixel
Tool provider
Meta Platforms Ireland Limited
Address of tool provider
4 Grand Canal Square, Grand Canal Harbour, Dublin, D02, Ireland.
Tool description
Used by Meta to serve ads, measure and improve ad relevance, and offer advertising products on Meta.
Data processed
Ads Viewed | Pages Visited | Browser Information | Facebook Cookie Information | Facebook User ID | Geographic Location | Device Information | HTTP Header | Interactions with Ads, Services and Products | IP Address | Marketing Information | Usage Data & Behavior | Pixel ID | Referrer URL | User Agent
Purpose of data processing
Analysis | Conversion Tracking | Marketing | Social Media | Advertising
Retention period
__fbp (duration: 3 months)
Tool name
LinkedIn
Tool provider
LinkedIn Ireland Unlimited Company
Address of tool provider
LinkedIn Ireland Unlimited Company Wilton Place, Dublin 2, Ireland
Tool description
This cookie is used to obtain anonymized reports about the website target audience and the possibility of targeted advertising, e.g., in the context of retargeting.
Data processed
Device information, browser information, IP address, referrer URL and time stamp.
Purpose of data processing
Marketing, analysis, retargeting
Retention period
Cookie Name (duration: 90 days)
Tool name
Google Analytics
Tool provider
Google Ireland Limited
Address of tool provider
Google Building Gordon House, 4 Barrow St, Grand Canal Dock, Dublin 4, D04 V4X7, Irland
Tool description
Used to track website activity such as session duration, pages per session and the engagement rate of individuals using the site, along with the information on the source of the traffic
Data processed
Ads Viewed | Pages Visited | Browser Information | Facebook Cookie Information | Facebook User ID | Geographic Location | Device Information | HTTP Header | Interactions with Ads, Services and Products | IP Address | Marketing Information | Usage Data & Behavior | Pixel ID | Referrer URL | User Agent
Purpose of data processing
Ad personalization | Ad user data | Ad storage | Analytics storage