Many utilities are transitioning from strictly “metering-oriented suppliers” of gas, water, and electricity to “customer-oriented full-service providers” with a diverse variety of services ranging from e-mobility and smart home solutions to fast data connections for private houses and even Industry 4.0.

Meeting the needs of the above industry requirements needed a modern IT infrastructure, ideally in the cloud in whole or in part, dynamically deployable applications, and seamless connectivity. Most utilities cannot make a complete transition to the cloud at this time, owing to the lack of a comprehensive, native cloud solution.

Time to know more about how the Utilities Industry can drive its pace of digital transformation with RISE with SAP’s business transformation as a service!

Let’s begin by unveiling the strategic priorities;

Strategic Priorities for the Utilities Industry:

• Build Customer Intimacy
• Support regulatory compliance and security
• Explore Build Customer Intimacy
• Build customer intimacy

This writing details the benefits of focusing on Building Customer Intimacy for the Utilities Industry.

What does “Build Customer Intimacy” for the Utilities Industry mean?

Transitioning from a traditional utility function to a sustainable energy and water service partner necessitates a more innovative and proactive customer-facing company. Consumers, on the other hand, desire the flexibility to experiment and choose how and when to interact.

Several industry competitors have taken the initiative to develop “best-in-class” customer experience transformation frameworks based on their mutual experiences. Customer journeys are being created with the end user in mind.

Understanding customer requirements and their thought process to design engagement channels and offering along a similar paradigm will act as a game changer for the utility industry.

What impact does Build Customer Intimacy create for the Utilities Industry?

In order to analyze the impact created let us give brainstorm on two different narrations and finally, identify the one with more efficiency;

Scenario 1:

➔ The product manager wishes to market a new product via the company’s partner channel. The product incorporates new energy pricing and hardware.

➔ He’s not sure how to build the product or handle the partners’ commissions.

➔ This in turn builds burdens to developing new products, added on it requires synchronization with the IT support teams that are often time-consuming and error-prone.

➔ Then go-live date is pushed back due to the difficulty of aligning numerous programs used to manage the products.

➔ When you plan to go live finally imagine consolidating all of the product billing components in the client invoice without the necessary information, tough right?

➔ Then client invoice is created after a huge delay, but the commission of the partners who sold the new goods cannot be tracked easily and accurately.

Finally, this becomes a slow and non-progressive journey.

Scenario 2:

➔ The product manager is looking for new goods and services to replace clients lost to new market entrants. He also intends to sell the goods through the company’s partner channel.

➔ The product manager determines the pilot group’s target consumer group and the provision of energy products and services.

➔ The product manager chooses to create a sourcing contract, as well as a sourcing event and service contracts with partners.

➔ The product manager discusses the pilot and conducts scenarios and simulations for the board in order to provide financial forecasts for the pilot and rollout.

➔ Customers are presented with the offer, compare it to others, then sign up on their mobile devices.

➔ Customers will afterward get a single invoice for all products purchased. The invoicing procedure aids in the settlement of partners’ commission fees.

And that’s how you integrate the data and efficiently utilize it to run your business.

After looking into both the scenarios, hope your answer is to choose the Next-Gen practices involved scenario to Build Customer Intimacy for your industry.

Now let’s look into the tools offered by SAP to build your customer intimacy:

Intelligent tools of SAP to build your customer intimacy for the Utilities Industry: 

• SAP Sales Cloud and SAP Service Cloud – used for sales interaction and service experiences, respectively
• SAP S/4HANA Utilities and SAP S/4HANA Cloud – designed for meter-to-cash workflows
• SAP Commerce Cloud solutions – designed to support multichannel sales
• SAP Emarsys Customer Engagement – designed to provide tailored multichannel engagement
• SAP Market Communication for Utilities – a data center for deregulated utilities
• SAP Self-Service Accelerator for Utilities by SEW – for giving self-service applications to customers
• SAP Customer Data Cloud – for managing identification, preferences, profiles, and access
• SAP Analytics Cloud –  provides improved decision-making by delivering accurate insights

Benefits offered to Utilities Industry by building customer intimacy: 

➔ Allow utilities to provide comprehensive customer service.

➔ Reduce time to market for new energy offerings.

➔ Send a single invoice to each of your clients.

➔ Increase your income by using your partner network.

➔ End-to-end process execution is supported.

➔ Easier connection with your front- and back-office software for structuring and billing commodity and non-commodity goods.

➔ Capability to issue a single invoice including your customer’s purchases of energy, services, subscriptions, or merchandise.

➔ Implementation of an automated and configurable partner revenue accounting and commissioning system.

Outcome-Driven Values:

• 25%-35 % Less work is required to develop fresh offers.
• Lower personnel turnover in the customer engagement center by 25%.
• A voice-of-the-customer initiative increased client margins by 18.2 %, compared to the industry average of 2.9%.

To conclude, RISE with SAP can accelerate the pace of digital transformation and your transition to green energy, optimize the environmental impact, increase asset utilization, reduce waste, build sustainable products, and increase compliance.  The SAP S/4HANA digital core and improved business analytic tools offer game-changing capabilities for utilities as they strive for more business agility, greater customer-centricity, and new business models and revenue streams.

Own your tomorrow with a guided journey and outcome-driven practices of RISE with SAP, to know more about the industry-specific solution, do get in touch with us!