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The Topic: Transformation UTILITY WEEK | 21ST - 27TH JULY 2017 | 13 The water sector is at an early stage on its journey towards digitised processes and services – and leaders openly accept this fact. Speaking at Utility Week Live, Southern Water's chief cus- tomer officer, Simon Oakes, said his company had launched an online self-serve portal for cus- tomers only in November last year – "remarkably recently". The service has been enthu- siastically welcomed by cus- tomers, who "have signed up in droves", said Oakes, demonstrat- ing that "people clearly want to self-serve". So, having taken some baby- steps, should the water sector accelerate into catch-up mode, chasing that tail of broadband providers, paid TV packages and energy? Not necessarily, Oakes cau- tioned. Customers only want a digital service from their water company "to a degree", he suggested. "I question whether custom- ers want an app and an online portal for a water provider, as well as an app and an online portal for their energy provider and an app and an online portal for their paid TV and so on. "I think that because we're in this catch-up race, we need to be careful in the water sector that we don't just go and do what everyone has done, rather than saying 'hang on, why don't we integrate?'" Building on this idea, Oakes suggested that the water sec- tor, from the position of digital laggard, has an opportunity to precipitate a true transformation of customer experience. "Why don't we be the first sector that stops reinventing the wheel?" he asked. "Instead we could try to put ourselves on to other plat- forms so that we genuinely make life easy for customers rather than giving them another web- site and another passcode that they need to remember." WATER Water companies are playing catch-up, but is there an opportunity for them to take a lead? Transformation and flexibility have been key words in the vocabulary of the utilities industry for the past ten or so years, and arguably for the last 30 years because transformation has already occurred multiple times. Consider the early 1990s when we experienced the commer- cialisation of utilities, a new regulatory structure, privatisation and changes in ownership. Certainly, when you look at the past ten years and recognise the prominence that the challenge of moving to a low-carbon economy has achieved, you can clearly see the impetus for a new kind of transformation. When we added sustainability to the utilities' responsibility for security of supply and affordability, we created a trilemma. There is no doubt in my mind that this new phase of transformation that we are currently experiencing has been driven by the sustainability agenda. It is underpinning the terms that utilities – gas, power and to a lesser degree water – are all talking about now, as an example of increasing customer control in the energy system. For instance, there are many and varied conversations taking place concerning renewables, decentralisation, storage, electric vehicles, community energy – even blockchain technology. We need to be flexible and innovative if we are to combat the challenges that all these developments mean to us as utilities. Flexibility means balancing affordability with our sustainability agenda in order to deliver reliability, the basic requirement which all of our customers expect. Of course, this is difficult in a world dominated by uncer- tainty. Nobody really knows how the market is going to evolve. How are electric vehicles going to be rolled out? Do we all expect to be able to recharge our electric vehicles at home? What is the impact of electricity storage and how will it be balanced? We can all try to predict the future but the one thing that we can be sure of is that we are going to get it wrong. That is why it is vitally important that we col- laborate – with government and the regulators as well as across industry – and that we respond quickly and imaginatively to customer demands. We can draw comfort from the fact that over the past ten years, we have already achieved a significant amount of transformation. The utilities industry has surprised a lot of critics. Only a mat- ter of ten years ago, commentators were saying 'the networks are going to be slow, the utilities are not going to respond'. The reality is that we have responded. We have connected more renewables to the system than anybody expected. Speaking from a power perspective, arguably we are way ahead on transformation. When we think about meeting our sustainability targets, we need to decarbonise transport and decarbonise heat. We now have a golden opportu- nity to explore the uncertainty in the transformation that is taking place all around us. What is a utility going to look like in 2030? We can see fundamental changes taking place in other sectors – the largest retailer, Alibaba, does not actually own any shops; the largest taxi company, Uber, does not own any taxis; the largest hotel company, Airbnb, does not own any hotels. Is the largest network company going to own any networks? We need to think outside of the con- ventional box. Utility Week Live is an oppor- tunity for all of us to explore the future and to work together. Basil Scarsella Basil Scarsella, chief executive of UK Power Networks, was voted one of the utilities industry's top ten trans- formative leaders prior to Utility Week Live. Below is a precis of the thoughts he shared with the Keynote con- ference audience on day one of the show. What I know about transformation... " "