How Technology Can Help Energy & Utility Companies Adapt To New Customer
Table of contents:
- Foster a collaborative mindset
- Adopt a single source of truth
- Sharpen your competitive edge
- Cloud Computing
- Digital Transformation/IoT
- Electric Vehicles
- Renewable and Distributed Energy Resources
- Security (Cyber and Physical)
- Adapt for the future
- conclusion
We can identify certain trends that are rising to the top. Typical among the technologies cited by utility stakeholders are cloud computing, digital transformation, and IoT, electric vehicles, distributed/renewable energy sources, and security.
This article offers an analyst’s perspective on how utilities can make the most of these technology trends and use them to improve the customer experience.
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Foster a collaborative mindset: When updating technology through digitization, culture can be the greatest hurdle you face. The necessary first step is to shift the attitude of internal stakeholders.
All must grasp and try to understand the company’s new emphasis on delivering the best possible customer experience, from new employees to the C-suite. They can only then implement the digital resources required to achieve their own customer-centric.
Adopt a single source of truth: First, in the populations you represent, imagine the panorama of segments. Personalized engagements and personalized deals are expected by each client. That makes a single customer perspective critical.
A single source of truth is generated by a customer relationship management (CRM) framework developed for the energy and utility industry. It draws data from various systems so that every team member sees it.
Sharpen your competitive edge: Sales and service teams can build, package, and deliver customized services and products with all customer data in one location. Artificial intelligence (AI) is able to engage clients with the most important data.
This could include how to work with the utility during excessive heat to maintain grid stability. Or, optimize a quote based on spot-market energy rates for an industrial customer’s multi-site operations.
Cloud Computing: Although utility companies have in many ways been labeled conservative and certainly slower than other sectors to embrace cloud technology, this is changing rapidly. While it may be slower to adjust to the core business of operating and maintaining delivery networks, as utility providers continue to become more customer-centered companies, cloud services are an attractive way to connect with consumers.
Digital Transformation/IoT: For years, utility firms have been ‘intelligent’ operators in many ways. Supply and demand control for all utilities is notified by instrumentation and telemetry across transmission and distribution networks.
The new IoT innovations, smaller, smarter sensors, and faster communications networks, allow more network components to be tracked and the resulting data analyzed to enhance the service.
It is possible to more quickly detect and resolve unplanned outages; equipment can be monitored for maintenance status and action taken before failure.
Maybe integrating with other ‘smart’ organizations would be the greatest challenge as buildings, neighborhoods, manufacturing sites and whole communities become more instrumented.
Electric Vehicles (EV): There has always been a background hum of ‘electric vehicles’-forklift trucks, electric battery vehicles, public service buses, etc. but what we’re really chatting about is the rise in electric cars.
With consumer concerns about gas and diesel engine emissions, electric cars are increasing in popularity. EVs raise issues for local utilities who need to support vehicle charging — whether drawn from the domestic supply, commercial premises, or the growing network of charging points along the roadside. Add to this the possibility of using the car battery as temporary storage with vehicle-to-grid technology
Renewable and Distributed Energy Resources: Sources of renewable energy (solar, on- and off-shore wind, hydro, biomass) are now available. Increasingly, concerned consumers are requesting supplies from so-called ‘green’ sources. The challenge these sources pose is that they are typically located away from traditional energy sources, and connecting them to the grid requires new infrastructure.
The small-scale solar rooftops and neighborhood microgrids that are becoming more common are more problematic. These distributed energy resources (DER) provide local consumers with energy and both supplement grid supply and return surplus supply to the grid.
For most utilities, this two-way flow is a new phenomenon and requires new tariffs and billing services, as well as more complex demands for forecasting.
Security (Cyber and Physical): What is also causing security concern is the very thing that puts many utilities ahead in the IoT world, their connected equipment. Higher fences may prevent a transformer from being torched by someone, but cyber threats are more difficult to spot. Check out the digital marketing companies san diego for the best online marketing services.
Risks can come from older devices originally intended only for local network connections that can now be connected to the internet, possibly to support cloud-based monitoring applications.
Adapt for the future: In order to propel the company forward, energy and utility companies must digitize to meet current customer expectations. Digital solutions let businesses, regardless of the industry, quickly adapt to challenges.
And, as the world emerges from the current pandemic, with clean energy and storage projects, well-prepared companies will be leading the economic recovery. The right technology, with stakeholders, buy the right technology.
Conclusion: There is still some way to go to address these technologies for utility companies, but they will address them, and the changes we will see in the industry can only be good news for the consumer.
