DISCOMs need to deeply evaluate these four business areas

Authored By:
RP Singh
Senior Vice President, SEW

As India gears up to meet the socio-economic changes, the energy and water sector is undergoing a radical transformation. The advent of smart homes, smart meters, EVs, native mobile apps, and a lot more, is fueling smarter lifestyle which has made today’s consumers informed, connected and much more demanding. To build superior experiences, DISCOMs need to develop a comprehensive strategy to adapt to these fast-moving transformations and bring in digital solutions while keeping change management at the center of the vision and strategies.

Whether it is offering an omnichannel experience to end customers, building connected workforce experiences, simplifying business operations, or improving agent productivity, digitalization is set to change how the energy and water industry operates. Needless to say, providers that are agile in embracing and adopting new technologies and can quickly pursue opportunities will position themself for growth.

Here are some areas businesses need to deeply evaluate:

BEING POWERED BY EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES

Using technologies such as AI, ML, IoT, NLP, Analytics, Cloud and Mobility, providers need to rethink several use cases for multiple business processes. These include optimizing the entire customer journey through intelligent insights, promoting digital self-service, delivering AI-powered chatbots, online smart marketplace solutions, comprehensive mobile workforce management, water- and energy-saving programs and more.

READY FOR EMOBILITY AND SMART HOME

As part of operationalizing decarbonization and achieving sustainability goals, energy providers and stakeholders need to drive greater eMobility adoption. By allowing customers to better manage and control their electric vehicles and smart devices, innovate to deploy behavioral demand response programs and provide bundled experiences that support the delivery of seamless and superior customer experiences.

ADVANCE INTELLIGENT COMMUNICATIONS

Providers need to drive proactive and personalized engagements with customers, offer channel parity and consistent omnichannel experiences across text, voice, email, IVR, push, social media and chatbots for intelligent communications and deeper customer-utility relationships.

FIELD SERVICE INNOVATIONS AND CONNECTED CUSTOMER-WORKFORCE EXPERIENCES

Simplify the day in the life of a field worker. Allow field workers to seamlessly gain the convenience and comfort of accessing information related to customer queries, assets, inventory, work orders, etc. and build a connected ecosystem with close collaboration of field workers and customers, thus removing silos and improving transparency.

We at SEW realize the urgency to meet the growing demand for digital transformation and recognized the value of investing in digital customer-workforce platforms that drive swift business outcomes. We partner with utilities and DISCOM’s to deliver solutions that are easy-to-use, integrate seamlessly with utility systems, and help build a strong technology foundation that allows utilities to become future ready, by harnessing the power of digital technologies.

With our innovative and industry-leading cloud platform, we aim to deliver not only the best Digital Customer Experiences (CX) but also Mobile Workforce Experiences (WX), powered by AI, ML and IoT Analytics (IX) to the global Energy, Water and Gas providers.