Key Findings & Highlights:

NelsonHall’s market analysis of smart IT utilities services consists of 68 pages.

Utility companies are facing unprecedented change in the marketplace, with regulatory frameworks evolving, utilities are required to increase choice and value for customers and leverage more from their existing generation and distribution assets, where they need to strengthen core legacy systems to ensure they run uninterrupted and efficient services. Key mega trends include Decarbonization, Deregulation and Decentralization.

Key user requirements include:

• Improving customer experience, including through SaaS applications (including SAP S/4 HANA, Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing) to enable ERP-led process transformation, and modernization of billing systems; virtual agents, self-serve and cloud-based omnichannel customer interactions
• Increasing use of analytics to improve insights to enable grid energy intelligence, predictive maintenance across transmission & distribution, and customer analytics to improve utilities’ understanding of customer requirements
• IoT/IIoT, to improve predictive-based maintenance through the use of IoT enabled sensors, and placing sensors at the edge, beyond the meter, in the network or a centralized asset
• Deploying agile methodologies and ways of working to quickly launch new products and services
• Increasing the use of intelligent automation to make sense of complexity of distributed energy resources (DER) and electric-vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure.

Vendors are developing their utility portfolio offerings to help executive boards and CIO’s and CDO’s to address the end-to-end challenges they are facing across the entire utilities value chain (generation & trading, transmission & distribution, retail services). Vendors are developing IP and third-party partner ecosystem solutions across the value chain, examples include trading risk management and forecasting platforms, digital twins in support of generation and trading. Across transmission & distribution vendor offerings include asset lifecycle management, predictive maintenance, DERMS, IIoT and field mobility. Within retail services vendors are developing capabilities in support of ‘utility-in-a box’ capabilities and enhancing CX through Oracle and SAP.

~80% of vendors are underpinning their utility offerings with their key horizontal capabilities across cloud, cybersecurity, ADM, infrastructure management, digital workplace, analytics, mobility, IoT, cognitive and AI.

Vendors are developing AI capabilities to support their initiatives across the utility value chain, in particular across transmission & distribution (smart asset management), and in retail services to improve customer experience. Key vendor capabilities include:

• Developing AI use cases in support of leakage management, decision support systems to assist engineers in making better and faster power outage decisions for maintenance of electrical distribution assets, pipeline supervision, managing energy demand, monitoring renewables
• Developing AI-led RPA tools to enable interconnectivity of the grid and the ability to automate the connection of new players to the grid. In particular from a distributed energy resources (DER) perspective across decentralized assets (including renewables)
• Developing capabilities across utility retail services in response to client investments in digital customer engagement initiatives, enabling digital channels to serve end-users though the channel of their choice, providing an omnichannel experience and personalized approach to drive new revenue streams, and improve CX.

IT services vendors are also using a plethora of third-party tools in support of asset management, smart grid analytics, IoT, data & analytics, cognitive, AI, AR/VR, intelligent automation, DevOps, workforce management, IAM and cybersecurity.