Utility Week

22 | 3RD - 9TH NOVEMBER 2017 | UTILITY WEEK Operations & Assets Key findings: Customer engagement will be targeted for improvement, with 81 per cent of respondents saying it will become increasingly important to their organisation in the next three to five years. Mobile and consumer technologies (such as apps) are expected to deliver the biggest changes to customer experience in the near-term, while enterprise technolo- gies for customer contacts are expected to have less impact. Opinion is divided about the extent to which skills shortages will undermine individual company plans to transform their businesses in the next three to five years. Fifty-nine per cent are confident their workforce strategy is sufficiently robust to deliver planned activities, while around a quarter say it is not. Half of respondents warned they see a skills crisis developing for the sector as a whole over the next three to five years. Data skills were identified as the most critical and hard to find. On technology adoption, respondents' views suggested the sector is acting to shake off a reputation for being a technology laggard. Over half characterised their organi- sation as a "fast follower" in terms of its uptake of emerging technology and 79 per cent said their company's appetite for new technology has increased in recent years. Customer engagement and asset management were identified as the business areas most likely to be affected by the uptake of new technologies in the next three to five years. Analysis T he utilities market is undergoing major change. New regulatory regimes are ramping up the pressure for both the energy and the water sectors to deliver new levels of efficiency and customer value, driven in part by politi- cal scrutiny, which has reached new heights. As this weight of oversight increases, utilities are also being pressed from the consumer side. Customers and their advocacy groups have become increasingly proactive in holding companies to account, capitalising on an expanding body of resources to track and compare performance on everything from the amount of time it takes for grievances to be addressed, to the amount they are being charged. Such comparisons are no longer limited to the utilities sector itself. Increas- ingly, consumers are pitting their energy and water services against those they receive from retail, financial services, broadband and telecoms providers. And equally, players in these spaces have begun to eye utilities provision as an oppor- tunity to expand burgeoning smart and connected homes portfolios. The upshot is that utilities are not only facing rising service expectations, but also find themselves competing with growing ferocity with the elite of Silicon Valley, vying for the best tech development talent. In this environment, Utility Week partnered with Wipro to gain a greater understanding of how utilities are responding. The "Future of Utilities" research project is a product of that partnership. It focuses on three critical areas which companies told us will define their futures: customer engagement, skills, and technology. By surveying senior leaders from across the UK utilities sector, we sought to uncover how companies will tackle the challenges and opportunities each of these areas pose in the next three to five years, creating a picture of the sector's immediate strategy for tackling a much larger, long-term transformation. However, commentary also exposed lingering doubts about the extent to which all market participants have truly bought in to the importance of customer engagement, with some contributors criticising large energy retailers for perpet- uating disengagement among core customer groups. Such claims remain a key point of contention in the energy retail market. With regards to the availability of skills, and the areas where shortfalls are likely to hit utilities hardest, respondents expressed common concerns about the increasing demand for data specialists, as well as more traditional techni- cian and engineering talent. There was a lack of confidence about the ability of companies, and the sector as a whole, to compete for these skills, which are also sought aer by parallel sectors and in many cases are seen to offer more appeal- ing career prospects. From developing formal skills strategies, linked to board level business ambi- tions, to investing in schemes to improve workplace image, respondents made it clear that actions to avert a skills crisis are being taken seriously. Finally, on the issue of technology and technology adoption, research par- ticipants were clear that the utilities sector is undergoing a process of attitude adjustment. There was a sense that leaders with responsibility for innovation and technology are keen to shake off a sector reputation for being risk averse and slow to embrace the unknown. They suggested that appetite for adopting new technologies is increasing, with nimble, scalable applications being targeted over and above conventional enterprise-level technologies in the future. The Future of Utilities Exclusive research by Utility Week and Wipro sought out senior utility management's views on the challenges of customer engagement, skills and technology. Here is a taster of that report. In 2015, Wipro partnered with Utility Week to establish the Technology and Innovation Council, a group of utilities leaders with responsibility for innovation and technol- ogy strategy in their organisations who meet regularly to discuss ways of fostering collaboration across the sector. To find out about joining the Council or attending a Council event, contact Elaine Munn: elaine.munn@ utilityweek.co.uk

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