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14 | 5th - 11th December 2014 | UtILItY WeeK Sponsored Report: Cloud Computing ing is going to be a massive revolution, but the challenge for the sector is to make sure they have the capabilities to deliver these new products and services with their existing go-to-market approach to custom- ers," points out Richard Wilding, profes- sor of supply chain strategy at Cranfield University School of Management. "The corporate culture in the sector isn't always outwards-facing enough, and capitalising on smart metering like this is going to call for a whole new set of customer-facing skills and competencies." Which, as it happens, was precisely what led Scottish water utility Business Stream to CRM, and to the cloud-based CRM offer- ing of Salesforce, back in 2008. Having just been spun out of Scottish Water as a sepa- rate entity, in order to serve the non-domes- tic and business market, the company was keenly aware that it faced a challenge. "We needed to be able to show our cus- tomers that we were the right supplier for them," recalled Mark Powles, the-then chief executive of Business Stream. "But with zero brand awareness and the mindset of a monopoly provider, we didn't have the cul- ture we needed to be successful in a competi- tive environment." Neither, for that matter, did it have the technology tools. Recognising that its billing system was not up to the job of managing customer interactions, asset management and workflow, Business Stream began using Salesforce to fill the gaps. "There was some nervousness about moving away from on-premise servers, and going to the cloud, but the benefits more than compensated," says Simon Driscoll, Business Stream's sales and contract support manager. "Finally, we've got that single view of the customer, without which we'd have lots of people going into lots of different sys- tems. Instead, we have the information that we need, housed in a single place, with a sin- gle point of contact." Moreover, he adds, customers also benefit from that single point of contact, being able to access the system remotely, and seeing in one place all the information that Busi- ness Stream possesses about them, as well as view their bill, and raise – and progress – service cases. "Today, we can sit in front of custom- ers, in customers' offices, and access all the information we need to hold a dialogue with them," he says. "It's all there, and it's all up to the minute, which would be much, much more difficult to do with an on-premise sys- tem, operated and maintained by ourselves." It's impressive stuff, and something that many other utilities can only dream of. As they look to catch up, the cloud beckons. Interview I T analyst firms don't come more influ- ential than America's Gartner Group. Consequently, its prediction earlier this year that most businesses would soon move to a scenario where their core enterprise IT applications were divided between in-house on-premise servers, and servers located in the cloud, carries clout. You don't have to look far to see the move to hosted servers already happening. Around the world, huge numbers of busi- nesses rely exclusively on cloud enterprise IT applications offered by the likes of SAP, Oracle, Salesforce, NetSuite, and Google. Many of these cloud offerings are best- in-class applications. In the world of Enter- prise Resource Planning (ERP), for instance, there are SAP's Business ByDesign and Net- Suite's ERP products. Human resources? That would be Oracle HCM. And Customer Relationship Management (CRM)? Look no further than Salesforce, relied upon by 100,000 organisations worldwide. Or, for that matter, at Concur's travel and expense management application, Click Soware's field service management offering, and SAP's Ariba B2B procurement platform. So it's a matter of some regret to David Mills, European regional vice president at Salesforce, that this wholesale move to cloud computing seems to be leaving the UK's util- ity sector behind. To address this, he is cur- rently hard at work on two fronts. First, persuading utilities to take a seri- ous look at cloud computing. And second, trying to interest them in seeing cloud-based Salesforce as the answer to their CRM needs – needs that are likely to become ever more pressing as competition in the utility sector intensifies, and the UK's smart metering roll- out gathers pace. "As consumers, we all consume cloud computing all the time," says Mills. "Twitter, Facebook, Google search, Google apps, Ama- zon, eBay – interact with these, and you're interacting with the cloud. Not only that, but Playing to win Salesforce's David Mills says the more competitive a sector becomes, the more it needs the edge offered by the cloud. salesforce positioned in Gartner's 'leaders' quadrant for Gartner Group's maGic quardant for crm customer enGaGement centre As of April 2014 Completeness of vision SugarCRM Eptica Astute Solutions Verint (Kana Enterprise) CRMnext Zendesk Lithium Technologies Oracle (Oracle Service Cloud) Microsoft Salesforce ChALLEngERS LEAdERS Oracle (Siebel) PegaSystems SAP Ability to execute niChE PLAyERS ViSiOnARiES nice Systems The Magic Quadrant is a graphical representation of a marketplace at and for a specific time period. It depicts Gartner's analysis of how certain vendors measure against criteria for that marketplace, as defined by Gartner. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or ser- vice depicted in the Magic Quadrant, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors placed in the "Leaders" quadrant. The Magic Quadrant is intended solely as a research tool, and is not meant to be a specific guide to action. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. Copyright: Gartner Brought to you in association with