JING WU

Principal Research Director,
Utilities Research
Info-Tech Research Group

Analyst Perspective

Transitioning to the adaptable utilities of the future, organizations are addressing unprecedented challenges through their Digital Transformation journeys. Data Analytics becomes all that more important to enable utilities to transform digitally. Although the level of maturity varies, the importance of data-driven business decision-making has been well acknowledged and somewhat supported across the utility industry.

The Big Data challenges manifest in the process of developing a data strategy, coined by the characteristics of 3V – Volume, Variety, Velocity and then expanded to 5V, 7V, and the latest 10V. With the advent of industrial 4.0, the amount of data collected by utilities will only grow as more and more IIoT devices are deployed. Utilities are struggling to figure out how to effectively leverage the data. Turning data into actionable insights is a key challenge for utility leaders.

Data strategy development could be time-consuming, and the heavy lifting is mostly building a list of prioritized business cases that truly deliver value. This research report provides utility leaders with a repository of pre-curated utility data analytics use cases and a filtering and prioritization framework. This approach can help fast-track the process of identifying the right business problems to solve strategically.

Your Challenge

• Building a list of value-driven business use cases required to develop a data analytics program.
• Justifying the effort and cost to invest in the program.
• Developing a practical and agile implementation plan.

Common Obstacles

• Large effort and long duration required to develop defendable use cases.
• Risks of failure often due to complex and lengthy projects.
• Uncertainties about how and where to start among the seemingly complex data strategy and data analytics landscape.
• Ability to demonstrate the measurable business benefits to gain executives’ buy-in.

Info-Tech’s Approach

• Accelerate your business case development by providing a curated data analytics use case repository.
• Identify the right data problems to solve that deliver the highest value by leveraging a rapid and effective prioritization framework.
• Develop an iterative and value proven roadmap based on your organizational scorecard.

Digitally transforming the utility business to strengthen its business capabilities is key to building its resilience. Proactive plans to address the external disruptions and internal interruptions call on actions to enhance foundational technology capabilities.

Digitalization accelerates the risks; expanding attack surfaces.

The enablement of an advanced data analytics platform to support data-driven digital utilities is the foundational step necessary to support any core business transformation initiatives.

Predicted 11.28% CAGR growth (2022-2027)
of big data analytics in the energy sector
[GlobeNewsWire, 2022]

Existing systems such as billing application is not effective in handling the fast generated data such as the interval data from smart meters.

Collecting data is useless unless you turn it into business insights to deliver value.

Data that is collected from different sources have disparate meaning and types. For example, a utility customer could mean different things for different departments.

Number of IIoT devices and field sensors are collecting unprecedented amounts of data. On-premise data storage becomes costly and not elastic enough.

Utilities are collecting varied data, both internal operational data and external data, but often siloed.

Quality of data could be measured in many ways such as accuracy, timeliness, and completeness, but the effort to track is often insurmountable.

The same set of raw data can be presented in many ways. Effective and meaningful storytelling can drive decision making.