IS YOUR UTILITY PLAYING FOR TEAM FLINTSTONE OR TEAM JETSON? The dearth of updated IT infrastructure leaves many in The Stone Age

Sometimes, the best teachers of history are Saturday morning cartoons. 

The Super Friends taught us about good versus evil. 

With the help of Backpack, Map and the rest of her friends, Dora The Explorer showed that you can find your way through any obstacle..

And Barney taught us to always be happy no matter the situation ( I cannot believe I made a Barney reference at work!).

But we energy and utility professionals could learn a few things from The Flintstones--and even more from The Jetsons. We are waged in a Stone Age vs Eye on the Future debate when it comes to the back office systems of our world’s energy and utility companies, yet many companies are complacent with Flintstone-like systems that don’t meet today’s customer needs. 

Forasmuch as we talk about our focus on the future, many North American utility and energy companies have antiquated infrastructures. The tools and resources that utilities use to deliver energy are either modernized or being updated, but what about CRM systems?  What about billing and customer service?

It’s not just me asking these questions.  In an April 2019 report, Deloitte asked energy executives to prioritize business operations over the next three to 5 years.  Their responses were heavily weighted toward improving productivity, reliability, and operational efficiency, while they ranked using insights from advanced analytics to better manage new resources slightly below.  And yet here we are, with a solution sitting in front of us that can address all of these needs in the cloud, and we’re not all taking advantage of it.

It may be a matter of costs.  It may also be a matter of change management.  But it is a matter that is front-and-center with how we operate, and our customers are asking us to get with the times.

A Yabba-Dabba-Do Solution Set

There’s a hint of irony in all of this discussion about utilities getting with the times--they’re already doing it!  With the rise of renewable energy, utility grids are leveraging the cloud to generate more computation power.  Still, we need to do more as an industry to get us over the finish line.  Here’s a guide on what you might want to ask your company to determine if they are “Team Flinstone” or “Team Jetson.”

First, assess your team’s productivity.  Connect with your operations, financial and human resources leaders to learn where and how people skills can be improved or optimized.  We all have processes and systems that can be improved, but we also have teams of people who we cannot forget are people and not machines….

....so assess the skills and aptitudes of your team to determine where machine learning and AI can supplement them--and not replace them.  It would be very easy for me to ask companies to think about the processes where AI and the cloud can create more efficiencies; truth be told, that is a lot of what we and others in the space do each day.  But we also believe that people are assets and not expenses--we want to find ways for technology to compliment people in current roles so that both people and technology are stronger, together. 

Once people and process are aligned, then start talking about where and how cost efficiencies can be achieved with cloud technology.  You may have noted above that I asked about human resources, finance and operations being involved.  The reality is that all business processes could benefit from the cloud and AI, but starting with those three functions will allow for the best learning and education to take place.  Each of them can catalyze other functions that they touch to use technology more effectively.

The cloud offers a lot of great opportunities for energy and utility companies--even more than Saturday morning cartoons!

Steven Dawson is Vice President of Sales for powercloud North America.