Utilities need to do digitalisation bigger and better
– what’s stopping them?
IN ASSOCIATION WITH
Digitalisation is key to unlocking many of utilities’ most intractable problems. But being ambitious within the bounds of regulation, whetting organisational risk appetite, and financing digitalisation effectively, are all proving challenging, said leaders at a meeting of Utility Week’s Digital Utilities Think Tank in partnership with Wipro.
Utilities are under huge pressure to digitalise and leverage technology to boost efficiency, redefine customer relationships, and operate smarter infrastructure, all while ensuring that critical services – the linchpins of social and economic wellbeing – are secure against physical and cyber threats.
Technology will create the foundations to not only cut costs associated with those services, but also help decarbonise the energy system, optimise and conserve water resources, and improve collaboration between organisations and their supply chains, to name just a few benefits.
But the sector’s huge digital ambition and its recognition of the urgent need for change belies a lack of confidence and immediate capability among some organisations to realise that value.
A recent meeting of the Digital Utilities Think Tank, hosted by Utility Week in partnership with Wipro, delved deeper into these issues, exploring specifically:
“The sector’s huge digital ambition and its recognition of the urgent need for change belies a lack of confidence and immediate capability among some organisations to realise that value.”
➊ How to drive higher value from digital investments
❷ Organisational readiness and compatibility with digital advances
❸ Approaches to measuring digitalisation benefits and;
❹ The influence of regulation on digitalisation ambition.
➊ How to drive higher value from digital investments
❷ Organisational readiness and compatibility with digital advances
❸ Approaches to measuring digitalisation benefits and;
❹ The influence of regulation on digitalisation ambition
This article offers insights into the responses of digital, data and transformation leaders from across the utilities sector to these themes. Among other things, their reflections suggest there is a pressing need for companies to renew focus on “productionising” digital innovations, developing a deeper “respect” for change management as an enabler of “final mile adoption”, and considering how financial models need to adapt to better support digital investment.
