Utilities
Paul Comlay
Delivery Director, Bluefin Solutions
Utilities
For most UK utilities, although underlying operational problems have been building up for long time, key resources haven’t!
I’ve noticed over the last few years that the key issues facing utilities around resource management haven’t really changed. What has changed dramatically is the pressure being exerted to actually do something about them.
Up to that point, utilities had become good at giving the regulatory bodies a set of answers in a highly prescriptive format, but most could not really quantify the value and quality of the underlying information. In turn, this meant that critical initiatives were often based on a consensus of what needed to change, without the ability to accurately reflect the state of play now or predict the future according to a number of varied scenarios.
What are the key issues?
Water and energy each have their own issues, most notably that competition is alive and well within the energy sector, but is still some way off for domestic water supply. Dig down to a lower level of detail and variables such as climate, geographic and demographic change, not to mention shareholder demands, all influence decision making to a greater or lesser extent. Throw the effects of the credit crunch into the mix (with a significant rise in bad debt and a short-term fall in demand), and a complex picture of required change emerges that requires a more agile approach to both the deployment and usability of IT solutions. At the strategic level, two key IT-dependent areas emerge: Forward Planning and Operational Efficiency.
Water world
The water industry has just entered into another of its five-year business cycles, where pricing limits and levels of investment have been pre-determined by the regulator, OfWat. It’s no longer good enough to aspire to upper-quartile performance. The more forward thinking companies are embracing good, solid business practices, taken from many other sectors, combined with a newfound ability to leverage the SAP toolset to improve proven processes and create true differentiation. Water companies face an interesting choice – press on with big-ticket transformational projects or create a strategy for more tightly controlled and incremental value. The latter offers a more process-aligned approach to delivering greater value from SAP.
New found energy
The pace of change is huge, with smart meters, the Smart Grid, alternative energies, emissions reductions compliance and a push for more diversified business models. There are also two elephants in the room: one is called ‘competition’ and has been stampeding around causing varying degrees of chaos to utility and customer alike for many years. The other one is dwindling resource – estimates suggest that half of our power generation facilities will reach end of life in the next ten years! So it would be fair to say that, while huge capital programmes are unavoidable, the careful prioritisation and efficient delivery of smaller projects should be seen as an opportunity, and not just inevitable.
Solutions
- Diverse mobility requirements e.g. asset management, workflow, CRM, workforce scheduling – SAP Sybase, Syclo
- Financial and Operation Planning requirements – BPC, IP
- Carbon Footprint – BI Toolset
- Performance Management, Regulatory Submission and Operational Excellence – EPM and BI Toolset
- Enhanced Customer Experience and Retention – CRM
- Increased HR efficiency – ESS, MSS
- Smart Metering and Grid Management – SOA and SAP Technology Products
- Strong Leadership and High Quality Workforce – Talent Management
- Infrastructure Savings, Business Process Efficiency – Solution Manager
- Tighter management of business processes, effective process improvement, reduced reliance on IT - Composite Environment