 Until recently, data has not been a major headache for energy and utility industry. Considering the complexities of budgets strained by aging assets managed with shrinking workforce in contrast with the investments in new capacity, renewable energy, and the convergence of operational technology (OT) with information technology (IT); combined with increasing regulatory measures and environmental concerns of the industry, it becomes demanding to ensure operational readiness and organisational profitability. Many a times, at the heart of these problems is the inability to use and manage structured and unstructured data that is available to a particular organisation. The advent of Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) has increased the level of data collection dramatically. To cite a case, if smart meters were incorporated across the U.S., they would generate five times the data of the current AT&T network.
Enterprise search relates to one such solution which can trespass some of these barricades. Enterprise search has been around for ~67 years as described by the concept of ‘Information Retrieval’ by J.E. Holmstrom in 1948. The main challenge faced by businesses that obstructs effective search is the vocabulary disconnect between the terminology and the inherent ambiguity of terminology in their information. The technology can help in enterprise metadata framework to improve search and address governance requirements, however, the technology needs to be embedded within the organisation starting from the tactical, business process level to the associate level through a combination of people and technologies. Coming to specific issues within this sector, for example, in large cities, the energy distribution network consisting of and managed using underground cables, power grids and transformers demand geo-spatial information in a multitude of forms and format. The field workers who are actually doing the operations need access to this information for maintenance jobs. Coordination of field operations is also critical during highly visible large-scale restoration operations that come under public and regulatory scrutiny and, it might be the case that closest field workers need to be located for immediate and urgent fixes. It shouldn’t strike as surprising if large organizations have over 50 million documents in their formal Electronic Document Management Systems (EDMS) alone. This is where Enterprise search drives the result to retrieve contextualised relevant information from MIS located in documents lying on CMS and link it with geo-spatial search so that a unified list of results in form of documents or links are generated. An aptly summarised view on how Enterprise search can help utilities & energy has been given by one of the leading vendors of the technology, Concept Searching, “Enterprise search is an infrastructure component and the impact of poor search reaches far beyond the retrieval of information. Impacting eDiscovery and litigation support, as well as unauthorised access to confidential information, inaccurate results can increase costs as well as organizational risk. Using multi-term metadata that represent a concept, identifying relevant content during a search effectively removes ambiguity and enables the retrieval of information based on the concepts within, increasing both precision and recall.” In this manner, the energy & utilities sector can unleash the power of data using Enterprise search and utilise it for success to ace the competition. Author: Debaleena Debnath Debaleena is a digital media consultant @ speradigital. To know more about our services, click here. Follow us Linkedin, Facebook and Twitter.
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 Smart meters or Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) roll out is turning out to be a game changer in the energy & utility sector in New Zealand, at par with similar countries like Canada, USA and a number of European countries. This technology aids greater control for consumers and utilities. By 2015, the estimated roll out of smart meters in New Zealand should stand at 1.6 million.
The technology of smart meter is not new, though there is a differing opinion on the definitions of the infrastructure, however, some common attributes that all agree upon are: • time-of-use (TOU) consumption recording, • remote meter reading capabilities, and • two-way communication. The potential benefits of smart meters accrue to multiple parties in the utility industry including retailers, distributors, and consumers. Some important consumer related remunerations are control and reduction in consumption, reduction in metering costs, and the collection of data to allow smarter and more targeted network investment. In the recent past, the market-driven roll out noticed a sweeping change with the Electricity Industry Participation Code 2010 mandate that electricity companies must ensure existing metering equipment gets re-certified by April, 2015. Several companies are taking this opportunity to install smart meters (in case of residential electricity) that collect data at frequent intervals and communicate that data directly to the electricity company. Thoughtful market leaders are trying to leverage the technology by buckling up with revamped customer service and marketing strategies. However, there are many thorns on the way ahead that companies should be careful of with regards to smart meter implementation. On one hand, companies would be able to deliver value to their customers and shareholders with data on consumption patterns to design their business models and pricing, while on the other, it cannot be ignored that customers are becoming more engaged and knowledgeable about their energy usage and choices they have with a number of providers in the value chain. The customer churn rate in the country continues to be overwhelming at ~20%. Besides, customer perception challenges exist not only with the smart meter technology but also with how well utilities communicate the new meters’ benefits. To make smart metering reliable and seamless, Utilities need to ensure the data integrity of their consumers. A foundation of trustworthy governance of data must be established by firms to comply with existing regulatory demands and prepare for future regulations. The disruption in the energy value chain in NZ is pushing traditional delivery models for power generation and networks towards obsolesce, which is expected to gain more speed over the medium term. Thus, businesses should aim to reach a break-even point vis-a-vis capital expenditure on smart meter implementation – which by the way can only be achieved by revamping the operating model - less people and improved processes. Utilities have a track record of being a conservative industry in terms of digital maturity. The retailers, distributors and even the government have focused more on technology and economic scenario, rather than the needs of the consumers of their products and services. With smart meters and grid, consumers are more likely to be in control of their energy usage with real time data and easier billing, this means consumers would also be interested to understand energy spend inclusive of proper explanation of each line items as well energy saving tips and other value added services. This can be corroborated from a survey of more than 1,800 Kiwis, which indicated that those who had changed their electricity usage behaviour (47% of respondents) in 2015, 89 percent did so to reduce the cost of their bill. Thus, Utilities would do well to utilise this opportunity to reflect upon the existing processes and change the delivery model and redesign processes that works well with smart meters. It would be difficult to realise the benefits of the new system with old processes still in place, and climbing up the digital ladder would rather be difficult. Author: Debaleena Debnath Debaleena is a digital media consultant @ speradigital. To know more about our services, click here. Follow us Linkedin, Facebook and Twitter.  Benefits of M2C process There is a pressing need for utilities to overcome the inherent operational issues due to a legacy culture combined with manual procedures, inefficient processes and outdated technology in order to leave behind the tag of a digitally conservative industry, which can be achieved by reducing operational costs, augmenting customer retention, optimising load management, enhancing meter data management and meeting regulatory demands.
Furthermore, of late, on one hand, utility providers are facing a stiff competition from new entrants as a result of market deregulation worldwide, while on the other, they are struggling to retain their customer base. All said, utilities seem to embrace the digital with smart-grid and processes like meter-to-cash, which is a significant process for utility companies to realise revenue generated from the down-stream value chain as well as connect with end-user directly. If done effectively, M2C also entails a fall on the overall cost-to-serve per customer by proactively communicating with customers by addressing and solving their complaints, and thereby improving the price competitiveness. However, utilities are being challenged with capital intensive investments in upgrading to smart-grid/metering infrastructures and consumer-centric revenue models, for instance, net-metering and time-of-use pricing that could significantly drive revenues down as consumption shifts to off-peak periods. Hence, utilities cannot ignore the efficiency if they adopt the M2C process. For the companies, M2C brings a bouquet of benefits as depicted in the figure. In September 2009, the European Union ratified a “Third Energy Package,” which aims to see every European electricity meter smart by 2022. Deployment of smart meters involve huge infrastructure cost as it brings in many elementary modifications to the M2C operations and managing the operations with cost efficiency may not be an easy task for utility companies by themselves, which is where the external service providers fit in. Managing the cut-over from traditional to smart meters, dealing with new network technologies, the diminished role of field services, and the upgrades required to meter data management systems (MDMS) are just some of the key obstacles that this industry needs to overcome while implementing smart meter systems. This would mean that instead of monthly or quarterly readings, consumers can have real-time access to data accurate up to an hour, which present a new challenge in the form of a vast amount of information and how a utility should leverage the data for meaningful business intelligence purposes. Utility industry have found outsourcing as one of their solutions wherein the service providers let utility companies use their own technology platforms that allows M2C process to be delivered by utility companies without any upfront capital expenditure. Some of the M2C functions that are being included on the smart metering wave range from pre-implementation advisory to post-implementation services such as smart analytics offerings. According to the Everest Group, M2C business BPO has been projected to reach nearly USD 70 billion from 50 billion globally, nevertheless, the current penetration remains insignificant. Moreover, outsourcing firms can help in standardisation of processes that result in overall enhanced performance of utilities. Author: Debaleena Debnath Debaleena is a digital media consultant @ speradigital. To know more about our services, please click here. Follow us Linkedin, Facebook and Twitter.  Nowadays, energy is a much expensive commodity and not just a natural resource. Futhermore, it has been regarded as a economic, geopolitical and strategic resource. Therefore, nations are much concerned about their energy security. Energy and utility industry are facing challenges in keeping pace with the demand and supply, increased regulatory systems, intense competition and new technological developments among others.
Keeping in mind the challenges of the industry, inclusive of the adverse environmental effects, the use of smart grid is fast gaining popularity world-wide. Smart meter is a vital constituent of the smart grid system wherein, the energy meter records the consumption of electrostatic potential energy in intervals of an hour or minutes and communicates this data to the utilities player for billing purposes. Growing demand for energy, coupled with increasing investment in power sector is expected to drive the global smart meters market to US$18.2 billion by 2019, at a CAGR of 10.2% during the period of 2014-2019. UK government has planned to roll out more than 50 million new smart meters to 30 million homes and 2 million businesses in the country between 2014 and 2019, according to a WNS study. Although, the government predicts that roll-out of smart metering systems to consumers’ homes will incur a cost of approximately £11 billion overall, nonetheless, the benefits of this installation would be far greater than this – around £7.2 billion once the costs have been taken into account as noted by Consumer Focus. Some of the costs associated with this new technology will be an issue in the early stages of the rollout as the government estimates that bills will increase by £7/year for the average dual fuel customer in 2015. The money saved will come from consumers saving energy, and cost savings for energy suppliers. Once the rollout is completed by 2020, the UK government expects an average dual fuel customer to save £25 a year on their energy bills, which is expected to increase further to £40 a year by 2030. Unlike home energy monitors, smart meters can collect information for remote reporting. Industry expects to make savings with lower cost of back office processes, and a reduced number of calls/complaints to the providers’ customer service teams as this metering would end estimated and inaccurate bills which are a major source of consumer complaints. It will also mean less inconvenience waiting in for the meter reader to arrive, or having to submit your own readings. Government believes these savings will be passed onto customers, and it will monitor the smart metering rollout to ensure that this is the case. Author: Debaleena Debnath Debaleena is a digital media consultant @ speradigital. To know more about our services, please click here.  Utilities have been considered a Conservative industry, where legacies of culture and regulatory environment co-exist that had been focusing on cost reduction rather than broader innovation (as demonstrated in the figure below).
However, change is gradually cutting across the utility industry. Technological develo- pments such as smart grids, pressure to install smart meters, Google’s Nest thermostat and energy consumption apps are giving customers more control over the timing of the energy they use and associated costs. This sea-change along with changing customer behaviours are creating new prospects for customer engagement and transformation of customer service by gaining customers’ confidence and community-based customer care. To become a socially-engaged organisation, utilities need to understand and gain insights of the usage of new digital technologies, for instance, social media, mobile, and analytics to advance rapidly on the economic landscape. These innovations are used widely by consumers and employees alike. For example, presently, of the 83% of adults who are online in UK, more than 60% are active on social media. Now, the onus is on the unit to create processes, methodologies and instill a framework that can serve the needs of customers. Customer services units today have no option but to be Efficient, Smart and Agile. The good news for companies here is that by tweaking the age old processes and a little bit of improvisation they will be able to shrink the customer services spend and simultaneously improve the net promoter score. In addition, these companies will benefit from having platforms to monitor utilities’ brand value and for marketing-related activities. Our utility champs @ speradigital, are well equipped to work with your team and assist you while you overhaul your existing processes. Author: Debaleena Debnath Debaleena is a digital media consultant @ speradigital Follow us Linkedin, Facebook and Twitter. |
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