Analyst Themes for 2016

1. Analyst Utilities Themes 2016
Christopher Manfredi

2. 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

3. 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

4. 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

5. “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

6. “…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

7. “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

8. “…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

9. Utilities Survey by IDC Show Top Priorites

10. 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