Utilities Search for Digital Payoffs

For a variety of reasons, energy companies have been adopting digital technologies, like cloud, data analytics, the Internet of Things, and artificial intelligence and machine learning, at growing rates. However, they have struggled to create sound business cases.

The move to the new technology has been swift and dramatic for many reasons. These solutions enable companies to spend much less time on mundane tasks, like tying the system infrastructure together and more on developing application differentiating features.

Furthermore, the pandemic forced energy companies to replace traditional business processes with new social distancing connections. But have the investments made a difference?

No Impact on the Bottom Line  

In many cases, no. About half of digital initiatives don’t meet CEO or executive expectations because they take too long to complete or too long to delivery expected value. Siloed organizations, expertise gaps, resistance to change, a shortage of workers, and a lack of leadership contribute to the shortfalls.

Clear accountability is also missing. Many organizations deploy the new solutions but lack explicit metrics to monitor their progress and impact.  Without such checks, they do not know what works and what does not work with the new solutions.

These application require close cooperation between the technology team and the business units. In many cases, they worked autonomously, so utilities need to find ways to meld the two into cohesive units.

Digital technology has the potential to greatly impact energy company operations. To date, few companies have realized the benefits. Energy companies have to break down traditional department silos, fuse technology into their business units, and create clear metrics in order to reach the potential.