Utility Week

36 | JANUARY 2021 | UTILITY WEEK Operational Excellence Analysis Supercharged transformation in field operations The pandemic has catalysed change in field worker experience and field force management. A new report from Utility Week, in association with Salesforce, explores how. T he coronavirus pandemic has necessi- tated many direct changes to the ways in which businesses operate, not least in field operations where the work involved means teams and individuals have not been able to simply flip to home working. To keep essential capital programmes, maintenance and other activities going, field personnel – and managers – have had to adopt some very different practices, includ- ing single occupancy of vehicles, socially distanced working and specialist PPE. How- ever, while these measures may ultimately fade as vaccination campaigns roll out and the virus ebbs (we hope), other effects of the pandemic on many pre-existing trends for change in field force operations look set to be longer lasting and, potentially, more pro- found in the long term. In a new report, created in association with cloud so-ware giant Salesforce, Utility Week explores the ways in which operations and human resources leaders in the sec- tor say the pandemic has accelerated and magnified trends for transformation in field worker experience and management – all in areas they had been working hard to pro- gress with varying degrees of success before the pandemic reached UK shores. Using insights from senior contributors working in energy and water utilities, we identified five key areas of accelerated trans- formation in field operations where necessity has proved the mother of invention. These include: Digitalisation of field processes While many utilities have been working for some time to digitialise traditional processes in reporting and data capture for field opera- tives, some companies nevertheless entered the pandemic with significant numbers of paper-based processes still in place. The pandemic has driven them to accelerate the creation of alternative digital routes for com- pleting these tasks. Meanwhile, those who were further ahead in process digitisation have picked up the pace of programmes to bring their field and customer information updates closer to real time. The benefits of this acceleration in dig- itisation could not come at a better time as companies knuckle down to delivering stretching operational efficiency savings in new and upcoming price controls for energy and water. Field workers as the front line of customer service For many years, energy and water companies have talked about the way in which rising regulatory and consumer expectations are pushing them to transition from engineering- focused ways of operating and prioritising work, towards a much more customer- centric view of the world. Contributors to our report confirmed that the pressures of the pan- demic have reinvigorated focus in this area, causing companies to accelerate projects to integrate operational and customer IT sys- tems as well as moves to decentralise oper- ating models to create greater autonomy and sense of ownership for localised field teams of customer outcomes. Building on the insights shared in this

• Cover