Analyst Utilities Themes 2016

Christopher Manfredi

Enterprise Asset Management

“Aging infrastructure, increasing financial pressure and shifting compliance requirements are challenging energy and utility companies to improve asset management. Capital expenditures must be more targeted, and operating expenditures must be carefully managed to meet financial targets…Asset management tools and technologies can boost asset availability, minimize the costs of maintenance and lower operational risks. These products also can improve an organization's ability to comply with regulations that prescribe how assets are inspected and/or maintained.”

- Gartner

Mobile Tech & Workforce Management Systems

“The forces that will have the biggest impact on MWM ” are consumerization, smart grid expansion, maturing cloud delivery, improved geospatial, and increased outsourcing of inspection and maintenance work.”

- Gartner

Advanced Distribution Management Systems

“Until recent years, most electric distribution depended more on conservative engineering ("design to peak load conditions" and "set and forget") than on intelligent control ("build to fit" and "optimize to objective"). Smart meters, sophisticated substation systems and downstream line sensors are boosting observability of the distribution network, while new line switches support "self-healing" capabilities.”

- Gartner

“Following a rush of MDM deployments in the U.S., triggered by the Smart Grid Investment Grant (SGIG) program in 2009, U.S. utilities have been focused on getting business value out of the consumption data stored in MDM. Consequently, many utilities are looking for meter data analytics solutions; this has spurred activities in the adjacent smart meter analytics market that are aimed at leveraging consumption data to improve analytical insights into areas such as energy theft detection, outage determination and asset failure avoidance”

- Gartner

Meter to Cash and Customer Service Processes

“…wide range of technologies used to improve the security of computers, information systems, Internet communications, networks, transactions, and operational technologies. It is used for confidentiality, integrity, privacy, and assurance. Through the use of security applications, organizations can provide security management, access control, authentication, virus protection, encryption, intrusion detection and prevention, vulnerability assessment, and perimeter defense ”

- IDC

Cybersecurity

“ETRM applications are involved with trading physical and financial energy commodities and include both transactional and analytic applications. These applications cover business processes from deal capture to settlement and include trader tools, risk management, credit risk management, bidding and pricing strategy, forecasting, settlement and pipeline nominations, and other logistics unique to the oil and gas industry. “

- IDC

Energy Trading & Risk Management

“…applications automate customer-facing business processes and collectively serve to manage the entire life cycle of a customer. They include customer self-service channels, automated customer access channels for sales and outage notification, meter data management for consumption and asset management, initiation of service orders, credit and collections, billing and payment management, customer sales and switching, and contact center management. This definition combines portions of IDC's customer relationship management (CRM) applications definition, order management, and utilities-specific applications.”

- IDC

Customer Care & Billing

Utilities Survey by IDC Show Top Priorites

References

- Optimizing Foundational Technology in Utilities Primer for 2016

- Magic Quadrant for Advanced Distribution Management Systems"

- Magic Quadrant for Meter Data Management Products

- Market Guide for Mobile Workforce Management Systems for Utilities

- Business Strategy: Utilities IT Investment Priorities for Solutions: Results from the Western European Utilities 2015 Survey