TMG Consulting
The Ultimate Digitalization Guide for Utilities

Despite its reputation for being tech-averse, the utility sector is rapidly transforming into a tech-driven industry. With rising costs, changing load patterns, newly viable technologies, all alongside various regulatory changes and the growing call to decarbonize, many disruptive forces are now driving the power and utility industry toward a digital-first reality. Technologies such as AI, IoT, cloud, and blockchain are acting as a catalyst for the digital growth of incumbents as well as the new players of the utility industry. But, all things considered, the main hurdle in this digital makeover is navigating the changing paradigm of technology while mitigating operational disturbance.

Enter TMG Consulting.

As an advisory and professional services firm in the utility sector, TMG helps utility companies to optimize and de-risk their IT investments. Since its inception in 1992, TMG has worked with more than 300 utility companies across 600+ enterprise projects—matching their business needs with digital solutions, systems integrations, and implementation services—to help devise a tailored digitalization roadmap. Keeping up with the changing time and evolving client demands, TMG has recently added a suite of professional, managed services, and research and market analysis services. Through these robust offerings, “TMG demonstrates best-in-class professional services and implementors of digital transformation projects, delivering on our commitments to meet the demands of the new utility model,” comments Mario Bauer, CEO of TMG.

Offering a peek inside TMG’s typical partnership approach, Bauer explains that TMG always assesses its clients’ particular digitalization needs using their different business use cases as reference points. TMG prepares these use cases based on its vast implementation experience and client interactions, alongside its ever-growing research community and studies; it is through these practices that TMG can highlight the tangible benefits of different digital solutions in the market at any time to best represent their digital interests. As a result, new clients can pick a use case that best represents their interests and expectations out of a digitalization drive. This use casedriven approach also helps TMG’s clients to ascertain where they stand in terms of digitalization (their ‘as-is’ state) and what their digital goals and timeline are (their ‘to-be’ stage). “Then, we formulate the optimal roadmap that connects our clients’ ‘as-is’ state with the ‘to-be’ stage with minimal operational disruption,” comments Bauer. Once the client approves the suggested roadmap, TMG enables the client in procuring the right solution and system integrators to offer a best-ofbreed project and change management, implementation, and stabilization services. It is also important to note that TMG specializes in leading the implementation of SAP S/4 ERP suites and C4C (Cloudfor- Customer) CRM solutions.

Alongside these offerings, another critical service area that distinguishes TMG is its research and market analysis arm. Unlike its competitors, who depend on third-party research firms for data evidence, TMG has a comprehensive inhouse database containing all its project data and insights from past partnerships and projects.

TMG demonstrates best-in-class professional services and implementors of digital transformation projects, delivering on our commitments to meet the demands of the new utility model

“Our direct experience working with utility companies enables us to offer practical intelligence and benchmarks for the many components of successful enterprise IT and edge system modernization projects,” asserts Bauer. This means every project suggestion and roadmap that TMG develops for its clients are backed by best-in-class industry data; data that continues to grow and modernize as TMG undertakes new projects. Additionally, the company also participates in industry research to gain insight into the most recent developments in the utility space. Leveraging these insights, TMG’s clients are able to capitalize on contemporary research and market analytics.

At this juncture, Bauer shares the story of a large investor-owned gas company in the southwestern U.S. to illustrate how TMG’s end-to-end advisory and professional services helped the company turn their digitalization drive into success. This particular client had many antiquated legacy applications that needed to be replaced or upgraded to stay contemporary. In addition to enhancing their technology, they aimed to improve overall performance by optimizing and automating select workflows, thereby easing the pressure of a shrinking workforce due to upcoming retirements. Based on the initial project roadmap and digital solutions chalked out by TMG, the gas company selected a modern tier-one ERP solution, SAP. TMG also helped the client select Accenture as the system integrator (SI) along with EY, Avertra, SEW, Deloitte, and FIS to lead various aspects of the implementation project like CIS and GTS. After helping set the stage, TMG worked with the utility in defining, developing, and implementing their digital strategy. “Because of these collective efforts, the client was able to implement the project on time and within the stipulated budget,” says Bauer.

Moving forward, TMG will leverage the learning from this comprehensive and professional service offering to help utility companies digitalize their operations and streamline business transformation. Along this vein, TMG is leading the way and working with clients to define their specific cloud migration strategy among utilities’ other digitalization needs. “We are in a great position to assist our clients navigate a complex, but rewarding, digitalization landscape and be ready for the future,” concludes Bauer.