Being smart with the mobile utility: utility organisations can exploit mobile business services to capture new strategic opportunities

Utility organisations are already reporting significant improvements through adoption of mobile technology, such as a 23% increase in service-level agreement compliance and a 10-20% improvement in field force productivity. This has been predominantly achieved by addressing efficiency, reliability and safety.

This is only the beginning. With the proliferation of mobile devices, utility organisations are well positioned to explore further opportunities in:

Demand management – Utility organisations can take advantage of the consumer desire to be more energy efficient by enabling energy management, for example through smart meters. This in turn enables the utility organisation to create tariffs instead of waiting for consumer-led demand to reach regulators.

Operational efficiency – Integration of mobile devices with spatial data enables utility organisations to react better to outages and improve asset maintenance. Furthermore, utility organisations can optimise workforce productivity by using mobile business services, such as SMS, to capture time entry and notify staff of service outages.  

Self-service efficiency – As a highly personal device the mobile phone is fast becoming the remote control for daily tasks. Utility organisations can leverage consumers’ mobile devices to derive service efficiency improvements by using simple mobile services to notify customers of billing status, credit and collections paid, service call reminders and outage management.

Brand awareness – The mobile phone also provides utility organisations with an opportunity to increase brand awareness by expanding personal interaction with the consumer. For example, by giving customers the ability to provide instant feedback on topics such as energy usage and pricing, utility organisations can gain a spot on the coveted customer mobile screen as an ‘app‘.

Given the rapid pace of technology change and the difficulty of integrating solutions, utility organisations require a mobile strategy that identifies the business opportunity, the level of change required and an understanding of how the available technologies will enable the strategy to achieve sustainable benefits. A recent example can be seen with Pepco Holdings Inc., a US East Coast utility, where PA Consulting Group rapidly assembled and created a consolidated plan covering all of their Smart Grid projects.

To learn more about PA Consulting Group's approach to mobile strategy for utilities and how we can help your organisation tap into the potential of mobile business, please contact us now.