Stedin

Stedin: from a fragmented process landscape to real-time control of the energy chain

Stedin manages one of the largest energy grids in the Netherlands, yet it lacked control over the complex chain of processes behind every power connection. Incentro implemented Camunda as an orchestration layer, giving Stedin real-time insight into lead times within a single month — visibility that previously didn't exist, or took weeks to piece together.

About Stedin

Stedin is one of the largest regional grid operators in the Netherlands, responsible for building, managing and maintaining the electricity and gas networks in regions including South Holland and Zeeland. As a vital link in the energy transition, Stedin runs thousands of projects a year, from connecting new residential districts to upgrading existing infrastructure.

In control of a chain no one could fully oversee

The energy transition puts enormous pressure on Stedin. Every new neighbourhood, wind farm and EV charging hub calls for a carefully coordinated process: from permit applications and soil surveys to excavation work and completion. Along the way, Stedin works with multiple internal departments, external contractors and third parties — each with their own applications, ways of working and responsibilities.

The result was a fragmented process landscape in which no one could see the full picture. A delay at a contractor or a drawn-out permit procedure stayed invisible until it was already too late to steer.

The Bodemdesk — the team that commissions soil surveys and applies for permits — is a telling example. They worked in their own OutSystems applications, but the moment a task was handed off to a contractor or an external party for a nitrogen assessment, the work dropped off the radar. Had the contractor already started? When would the permit come back? No one knew exactly. And the consequences are real: a permit on municipal land takes three weeks on average, but when the last fifty metres of cable have to cross private land, the turnaround can easily stretch to six months.

We knew there were delays. But where the work was stuck, how long it had been sitting there, and with whom — that was a blind spot.

Stedin

From flying blind to real-time process control

Incentro implemented Camunda as an orchestration layer on top of the Bodemdesk's existing OutSystems applications. Rather than replacing those applications, it connected them intelligently: the work still happens in the familiar systems people know, but Camunda captures the triggers, tracks progress and makes the status of every task — internal and external — visible in a single dashboard.

Within one month, the first process was fully mapped, built and taken into production. Where Stedin previously needed separate BI teams to gather, verify and visualise data, teams now have real-time insight — up to ten times faster than before. Through heatmaps and process analysis, Camunda Optimize instantly reveals lead times, bottlenecks and waiting times at external parties. Insight that simply didn't exist before.

The scale at which this plays out is striking too: the approach was used, among other things, to clear a backlog of 150,000 cases in the meter-reading process — largely automated, without staff having to chase them down by hand. In that process, Camunda was also connected to an end-user portal and to an AI model that automatically assesses and processes uploaded photos of meter readings.

Control across the entire department

The work at the Bodemdesk shows what becomes possible when you bring a single department fully into view. The next step — already underway — is to roll this visibility out across every process within the department. That creates a complete overview of all lead times, waiting times and bottlenecks, giving Stedin a demonstrable way to monitor its own KPIs and account for them to regulators.

Within a month, the process was in production. That's the power of orchestration: you don't have to rebuild everything — you bring control to what's already there.

Reguillo Wijnaldum, Architect at Incentro

Collaboration beyond the assignment

The engagement at Stedin started with a proof of concept: Incentro demonstrated in practice what Camunda can do. That enthusiasm won other departments over too. Whenever a new use case emerged, the right people were brought together: a product owner with a concrete problem, a lead developer to build it, and architects to safeguard the boundaries of what's technically and organisationally sound.

That multidisciplinary approach — business, IT and architecture around one table — is more than a way of working. It marks the first steps towards a center of excellence: a place where knowledge of process control isn't scattered across departments, but shared, and from there makes the whole organisation stronger. Incentro set that movement in motion and connected the people within Stedin who will carry it forward.

Want to get a grip on your own process chain? Book a Discovery and find out where orchestration can make the difference for your organisation.

Unique features

Up to 10x faster access to process insights compared to traditional BI reporting
One month from initial idea to production for the Bodemdesk process
150,000 backlogged meter-reading cases cleared through automated process orchestration
Real-time visibility into lead times, both internally and at external parties (contractors, permit authorities)
Multiple departments connected to a single shared orchestration layer
AI integration for automatic assessment of uploaded meter-reading photos