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Utilities Business Review | Thursday, February 10, 2022
The utility industry is streamlining its processes by adopting digital solutions while optimizing the workforce.
FREEMONT, CA: Modern utilities must speak and sell directly to their customers, manage and service enormous capital assets and distribution networks, and meet their customers' specific support and service needs. Utilities may need to invest in technology infrastructure to support retail operations, complex billing and taxation requirements, supply chain management, logistics, procurement, and cybersecurity, and to manage an increasingly scarce talent pool.
Utilities must upgrade their engineering capacity by moving to modern, cloud-based systems from a technology foundation that was last updated during the Y2K crisis.
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Any major enterprise software system, including SAP, can be run by utilities.
There are many similarities, such as the need to innovate and keep up with new competitive threats and take advantage of new business opportunities. Utility companies aim to improve productivity and return on investment to ratepayers and other stakeholders.
Digital adoption: Upgrades and updates to legacy technology may not produce dramatic changes but can produce dramatic outcomes. It can support significant new requirements without massive disruption by moving some strategic IT systems to the cloud while maintaining hybrid on-premise systems. A cloud-based ERP system can provide significant benefits for analytics, asset management, materials management, field service, billing, and other ERP processes. A rip-and-replace project can result in more efficient customer service, better budgeting, and more effective regulatory compliance without substantially impacting the bottom line.
It is important to begin by identifying strategic processes that require improvement. The deployment of smart meters and other IoT technologies has changed the operations of many utilities and left them behind in IT systems. Integrating IT with operations is an important goal of any utility trying to find strategic wins in a mountain of new opportunities.
Automating and standardizing complex customized processes can allow organizations to retire costly, difficult-to-maintain code. SAP's cloud properties can support an increasing number of standardized business processes. A particular focus is on assets, customer service, field service, and environmental, social, and governance requirements (ESG).
Workforce: Utility companies need to help stakeholders deal with the changes that tech upgrades and cloud migration will bring. A company's people are paramount to technology innovation and transformation, regardless of whether they are internal employees, contractors, or customers.
As costs rise and recession looms, companies must be as strategic as possible when investing in technology, even cloud-based SaaS investments that are no longer important as capital expenses. Modern utility companies will only get more complicated as the global economy becomes more complex and dynamic.
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