Utility Success Stories: Embracing the Shifting Energy Landscape

By CIOReview | Tuesday, October 9, 2018

SAN ANTONIO: Disruptive business models have quickly become the “new normal” in the utility space. Just a few of the forces shaping today’s energy landscape: customers playing a more active role in how they consume and manage their energy, advancing digital technologies risk leaving some companies behind, and data and analytics helping to form actionable insights. Utility organizations must digitize their business processes to succeed.

After extensive research and intricate vetting with the help of an expert panel, the SAP for Utilities team uncovered leading success stories and insights to unlock solutions to these major industry challenges. Here’s a look at the innovation occurring within the utility industry from the perspective of the practitioners who live and breathe the business on a day-to-day basis.

Helping San Antonio Embrace the Smart City Concept

Successful smart cities rely on their utility companies to power the connections between infrastructure, transportation, and technology. As the implementation of smart cities begins to rise, the utility industry is tasked with becoming a key innovation partner in areas such as sustainable energy, the Internet of Things (IoT), and data and analytics. CPS Energy, the largestmunicipally owned energy utility in the U.S., is embracing these concepts and emerging technologies to support San Antonio and its residents towards becoming a more-connected, inclusive, and resilient community.

CenterPoint Energy Utilizing Asset Analytics to Improve Operational Efficiencies

CenterPoint Energyis a Fortune 500 electric and natural gas utility serving several markets in the southern U.S. CenterPoint Energy needed to consolidate multiple disparate data sources for easier analytical decision-making and to help focus on higher-risk assets to optimize capital resources. They implemented SAP Predictive Maintenance and Service (PdMS) to provide an end-to-end solution to the operations and engineering business. The PdMS platform was designed to provide more insight into the lifecycle of CenterPoint Energy’s assets by analyzing various key attributes. By visualizing characteristics of assets, multiple benefits have been realized, including business process improvement opportunities and operational efficiencies. CenterPoint Energy is continuinglyincorporating additional assets as the data and needs become apparent.

How National Grid’s Journey into Cloud Transformed Their Strategic Vision

National Grid is a British multinational electricity and gas utility company serving customers in the U.K. and Northeastern U.S. National Grid’s journey into cloud solutions helped bring the company’s strategic vision of leading a digital utility company into reality. After building a cloud solutionsroadmap, the challenge of optimizing their process for procurement and analyzing pattern of spend came to the surface. National Grid implemented SAP^® Ariba^®, Concur^®, and Fieldglass^® for better visibility and control of spending. In addition, implementingSAP^® Success Factors^® solutions for human capital management helps tap into the full potential of each employee. This journey resulted in optimized end-to-end processes, significantly reduced the cost of maintenance and support, and transformed the organization into a digital utility.

Duke Energy’s Program to Simplify & Empower Customer Experience

Duke Energy, one of the largest electric power holding companies in the U.S., supplying and delivering electricity to approximately 7.4 million customers, is undertaking an expansive customer transformation program called Customer Connect. The program is foundational to transforming their customer experience and required their strategic vision to be realized for the benefit of customers. Throughout the implementation, Duke Energy will harness the capabilities of SAP’s suite of products to simplify experiences through consistency and personalization.

Entergy’s Case Study on Moving to the Cloud

Entergy delivers electricity to 2.9 million U.S. utility customers in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas. Entergy created a strategic analytics roadmap to develop, optimize, and leverage their data and analytics to their fullest potential.Through implementing on-premise and cloud-based capabilities with an enterprise-wide focus, Entergy’s analytics platform utilizes widelyaccepted, open-source tools,which has enabled them to scale up quickly. The analytics results todate have been outstanding, and Entergy is continuing to implement new use cases.

These success stories will be presented at the 2018 SAP for Utilities conference. The 11^thannual event will bring together some of the biggest players in the industry to learn how to conquer digital disruption and thrive in today’s shiftingenergylandscape. Produced by Eventful Conferences, an ASUG company,in collaboration with SAP,SAP for Utilitieswill take place Oct. 15-17, 2018,at the Grand Hyatt in San Antonio. Register for SAP for Utilities with promo codeCIOReview to save $200.Visit www.sapforutilitiesconf.com for more information.