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Polare enabled Octopus Energy to move away from an unmanageable Google Sheet to a reliable, intuitive tool. Errors caused by manual input and formatting issues disappeared, making workforce planning far more efficient.
With Polare, managers can now directly input their forecasts, enhancing their autonomy and significantly reducing the workload of the people team. This approach fosters collaboration and streamlines planning processes.
Polare delivers clear visualizations and accurate projections, essential for effective planning. The tool builds trust across all levels of the company, including the executive team, and drives strategic discussions on growth and resource allocation.
Octopus Energy is a 100% green, 100% French electricity provider experiencing rapid growth. The company now has 334 employees. What sets them apart? Their customer service—widely recognized as the best in the market.
When we first met Daniel, Head fo People Operations, Marianne, Talent Lead, and Claire, Strategic Finance Analyst, they were searching for a solution to replace their Google Sheet, which had become unsustainable as they scaled.
“Excel worked fine when we were a team of 40. But as we grew to 20–30 hires per month, it became impossible to manage.” – Marianne, Talent Lead
“So many people had access to the spreadsheet, and it came with huge risks of errors. It was very manual, and any misformatted input would cause it to crash. Collaboration became a real challenge.” – Daniel, Head of People Operations
The spreadsheet also lacked essential features:
In short, it wasn’t sustainable.
“Excel was fine, but it quickly became a mess. Now, everything is so much easier and more automated.” – Marianne
Enough said.
One of Marianne and Daniel’s primary goals, in line with the company’s values of employee autonomy, was to make managers more accountable for their recruitment targets. Mission accomplished: “Managers can now enter their forecasts directly. It gives them ownership, and it saves me so much time.” – Marianne
Before Polare, comparing forecasts to actuals and planning for the future was nearly impossible—especially in a fast-growing company like Octopus Energy.
With Polare, the team now has precise data and strategic visualizations: “Polare lets us easily identify that we have 50 open roles, with 40 planned for recruitment in Lille. It completely changes how we plan.” – Daniel “It also opens up new conversations. We can really see what we’re doing and make realistic decisions.”
Marianne adds: “The tool makes a clear distinction between what we forecasted and what we actually achieved. This was something we were missing before. Now, we can see if we’re ahead or behind.”
Polare has become more than just a time-saving tool for the team—it’s earned the trust of key stakeholders like the executive committee: “They trust the tool.” – Daniel
He adds: “It enables better discussions. When you present this data to the executive team, they see the company evolving to the next level. It also helps us talk about onboarding, office space, and where we’re recruiting geographically.”
Collaboration transforms everything when it’s seamless. With a single tool to centralize all data, Daniel describes Polare as a “judge of truth”: “Everyone uses the same data, and there’s no debate over its validity.”
“What stood out was your responsiveness. It felt like we co-built this together, which was very meaningful from a human perspective. And it matters. You’re super responsive and a pleasure to work with.” – Daniel
“I never felt like we were handed a pre-made tool that didn’t suit our needs. You’ve always adapted quickly to our feedback. It felt like working with our internal data team.” – Marianne
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