The benefits of digital transformation within the utility industry are significant and too numerous to ignore. Transforming operations using digital technologies result in performance gains in areas such areas as safety, customer satisfaction, reliability and regulatory compliance.

According to Bain & Company, utilities are eager to adopt these changes, investing millions of dollars and scurrying to hire data scientists and developers. In fact, the utility workforce is undergoing a shift in its makeup. Once made up of individuals with “a reputation of a gritty and intense nature,” the industry’s workforce now includes tech-savvy individuals like data scientists, software engineers and other non-electrical engineers.

This shift in the makeup of the utility workforce may be a result of an aging workforce. Up to 25 percent of workers in the electric and natural gas industries will be ready to retire within the next five years, according to a 2017 U.S. Department of Energy Assessment. Not only is the utility sector concerned with replacing the retiring workforce, but also with replacing the institutional knowledge acquired from these workers, who have spent decades with the industry.

The knowledge of the old, combined with the skills required to navigate a maze of new modern technical infrastructure, is needed not just to maintain the electric grid, but to create a smarter, faster and more robust electric infrastructure.

The challenge of combining the “old versus new” issue parallels the way utilities get data from their service providers. Despite an effort to usher in a new generation of technology-minded workers, many of the data collection, reporting, workflows and analysis methods used by utility service providers are still manual.

Utility service provider executives should be looking at ways to digitize existing processes. According to a recent report titled “Manual Processes Amid Utility Service Providers: A Survey Report from the Utilities’ Perspective,” utility service providers still rely on manual processes to share data and reporting with utilities. This includes the use of paper forms, as well as Word and Excel documents to communicate vital information, such as data related to safety, compliance and outage information. The manual processes used by utility service providers are preventing utilities from moving forward with digitization by increasing the time needed to analyze data, keep up with compliance issues, and even respond to outages.

The prevalence of manual data methods

How big is this problem? Nearly two-thirds (63 percent) of utilities said that their service providers use manual processes to share data and reporting, including paper forms and Word and Excel documents. Although they report that manual processes significantly inhibit their businesses, large construction companies often use paper forms, hand drawings, spreadsheets and phone calls to organize and manage services like utility, power, gas, water and communications. That means they're relying on laborious, time-consuming and error-prone processes to manage hundreds of projects per week. For example, to complete a single installation, one form passes multiple times between a supervisor, surveyor, foreman and installation crew for each phase of the implementation. Surveyors often hand-draw the worksite for the installation crew.

Even once the installation is complete, the paper form passes to a project manager who hand-types the information into a billing system to send to customers. It's reported that billing processes for a single installation can take days, sometimes weeks. In fact, only 23 percent of utilities say their service providers are fully digitized. Accurate and reliable data from service providers is a lifeline for utilities. Without it, utilities risk poor customer service, the inability to control costs and running inefficiently. Despite the risks, service providers continue to rely on manual processes as they conduct business for utility customers, increasing the potential for inaccurate and outdated data which informs important decisions.

The impacts of manual processes

When utility service providers rely on manual processes, they hinder utilities from providing safe, reliable and cost-effective services to its customers. In fact, manual processes inhibit utilities’ critical ability to service outages. The top three utility departments impacted by service providers’ manual processes are outage and crew management (65 percent), customer service (65 percent) and finance/accounting (59 percent).

Day-to-day business processes are also impacted by the continued use of manual processes because of their:

• contribution to time-consuming reporting and auditing (80 percent)
• high cost of data entry/capture into the utilities' business systems (70 percent)
• lack of timely information impacting outage management and customer services (65 percent)
• greater potential for introducing compliance issues (51 percent)

The time costs of manual data

Time doesn’t stand still for utilities, as service is expected 24/7, and customers expect up-to-the-second information when issues arise. However, when service providers use manual processes, utilities lose precious time inputting data into their key systems. In fact, 68 percent said when they receive data and reports manually from their service providers, they spend one or more hours each day inputting the data and reports into their systems.

Nearly one-third (29 percent) of utilities said they require more than three hours per day to input data and reports into their systems when data is received manually from service providers. Additionally, more than half (53 percent) of utilities said when data is received manually from service providers, it must be manually inputted into two-to-three systems.

Risks of manual processes

When manual processes are used by service providers, utilities are left to deal with inaccurate and out-of-date information. A vast majority of utilities (86 percent) who rely on data from service providers for asset information agree this introduces risks:

• 35 percent said the asset/as-built information from their service providers is only sometimes accurate
• 33 percent said there was a risk of error because it has to be inputted manually
• 30 percent said there was a risk of lack of timely data

Most notably, service providers’ manual processes also make it difficult for utilities to report on safety and compliance. Almost half (44 percent) of utilities said it would take service providers days or weeks to respond with information for audits on safety and compliance.

A proven solution

A prominent Northeast construction company needed a mobile workflow platform that could be deployed quickly with minimal IT effort. The platform also needed to be flexible enough to be owned and maintained by individual business departments, as this company provided services for utility, power, gas distribution, water and the communications industries.

By digitizing their installation process, employees were now free to do more on-site work rather than push paper in the office. Surveyors who used to hand-draw the work-site environment now capture work-site details with geo-location, pictures and notes in the mobile app. Notations, diagrams and other information can also be captured directly in the mobile app to illustrate potential obstacles, such as gas lines, sidewalk crossings or fencing.

Also, when there’s a problem, workers can now digitally send alerts directly to the supervisor. They also document safety risks or incidents – allowing office staff to track and pull a variety of safety analytics and reports. Additionally, the data collected throughout installation is immediately available to the payroll, invoicing and project management teams – eliminating late nights of data entry and allowing for better communication with their customers.

To track progress and productivity, the company also built a reporting dashboard to show metrics, such as the average days from the start of an installation to its invoicing, the average price of each install per day, as well as employee performance metrics. Further, the company built another app for billing that has reduced invoicing time from six days to just hours — an 80 percent improvement.

Since digitizing, the construction company has improved their productivity, speed and accuracy of accounts receivable and reporting with their customers. This has resulted in more efficient, responsive and decisive business operations.

Digitization going forward

Utilities are beginning to demand their service providers ditch their manual processes and embrace digitization, or risk losing their businesses. Almost two-thirds (61 percent) of utilities said that it’s very important that their service providers automate data collection, processes and reporting, and that it will be required to do business with them.

Additionally, utilities are planning to use automation as a way to cut costs in the future. More than half (54 percent) of utilities said they plan to reduce their costs by requiring service providers to digitize data collection, workflows and reporting.

Where we go from here

The push-and-pull between old versus new is prevalent in the utility industry. In the same way that utilities are trying to balance a shift with keeping institutional knowledge intact while also incorporating new technologies into the fold, they are also struggling to digitize their systems as their critical partners continue to rely on manual methods.

And so the relationship between utilities and their service providers is at a tipping point. Fast, accurate data has the ability to save time, improve safety and improve overall customer service. But utilities are struggling to realize these efficiencies because of their service providers’ manual processes.

This gap in processes is why a shift toward a more streamlined, digitized data collection and workflows is imperative. It’s clear that utilities themselves are already making this shift and are now looking outside their own organization to require service providers to automate their processes as well.

Service providers need to replace manual methods like paper and spreadsheets, with more dynamic options like mobile apps, which allow for data capture in the field, online or offline. This shift would dramatically reduce the time it takes for service providers to capture and relay critical data – whether that be internally or to the utility.

The capabilities of low-code workflow platforms that cover both web and mobile hold massive potential for service providers, where the ability to control costs, maintain compliance and respond swiftly and accurately to rapidly changing information is paramount for utilities and their customers.