Utility Week

22 | 24TH - 30TH MAY 2019 | UTILITY WEEK Operations & Assets Roundtable Utility Week/WNS Customer Trust Council, London, 3 May 2019 D ata is the undisputed new value in energy, a vital tool for empowering consumers, driving decarbonisation and unlocking the decentralisation of the sector. It brings an unprecedented opportunity for utilities to forge new relationships with their customers, change how they interact in the future and transform service. Access to huge amounts of data can allow energy and water companies to reset the dial on out- dated systems of working and enable greater efficiencies. Yet with this changing landscape and powerful information come new responsibili- ties for utilities, who must protect customer data, respect ethical boundaries and ensure legal obligations are met. In short, they must ensure they use customer data for good. It was this critical and burgeoning issue Using customer data for good The data revolution offers huge opportunities for transforming customer service and efficiency. So how can utilities best harness this powerful new tool and use it to build consumer trust, asked those attending the latest gathering of the Utility Week/WNS Trust Council, reports Suzanne Heneghan. Join the dots Ardi Kolah offered the council some sharp perspective on what data really represents. "It's about business continuity, it's about risk and it's about technology – and it's about joining those dots. It's not about the fines, the sanctions. It's about empowering people. And we have to start from the right point. We are all forces for good." Which means being a safe place to do business, said Kolah. "The best way to demonstrate trust is to make sure you are compliant. When GDPR is explained, companies realise it's not such a bad thing. It's about trying to understand who we are trying to serve, their needs, their requirements. "When you look at the [GDPR] legisla- tion, it is actually a piece of human rights legislation. It's about how do you go about deepening digital trust to do more not less with personal data. "If you do the right thing because it's the right thing to do you won't get fined, or sanctioned, but that's not necessarily going to make you successful, to deliver profits and the services your consumers want – that's just a hygiene factor. "It's about empowerment. When you boil GDPR down, it's about transpar- ency, accountability and control. It's about being absolutely, completely clear about what you're doing, why and who else you're doing it with, so that people understand that. Technology as an enabler of change is increasingly allowing customers to be controllers of their own data. "Join the dots on business continu- ity, look at risk from the lens of the consumer, and use technology to achieve this. If you can join the dots you will be hugely successful." for industry that was chosen as the topic for this year's spring forum of the Utility Week/ WNS Customer Trust Council, held at the Charlotte Street Hotel in London and hosted by Utility Week magazine editor Suzanne Heneghan. Members were joined by two expert speakers in consumer data. One was former MP Laura Sandys, now the chief executive of policy think-tank Challenging Ideas, and chair of the Energy Task Force, which was created to advise government, Ofgem and industry on how to harness value from data within the energy system. She opened the discussion with a talk about the potential of data to revolutionise the utilities industry (see column, right). Ardi Kolah, former director of the GDPR transition programme at Henley Business School, and data protection officer (Europe)

• Cover