The digital age has brought with it a new type of consumer, one who increasingly expects, and even demands, to have it his or her way whether transacting, communicating, working or simply enjoying leisure time. We have entered “Era I” – the Age of the Individual.

But while consumers have new, individual expectations of the enterprises with whom they interact and do business, what does this mean for today’s enterprises? Organizations and businesses need to be ready and able to respond very quickly to consumer – and employee – expectations and deliver content, experiences, services and technology to individuals however and wherever those individuals desire. But, while businesses understand the need to change, it can be quite difficult to quickly put that goal into action. How prepared, really, are organizations to make this shift?

Earlier this year, Oracle conducted telephone and online interviews with 300 North American C-level executives across 10 industries: Communications, Education and Research, Engineering and Construction, Financial Services, Healthcare, Hospitality, Life Sciences, Public Sector, Retail, and Utilities. The goal: To answer that question.

Most organizations are unprepared for Era I
The resultant report, The Era I Enterprise: “Ready for Anything”, was published in April of this year. Across industries, the study revealed that organizations, by and large, are unprepared to manage the need for personalization brought about in Era I. Key takeaways included:

• 84 percent of those surveyed say their organization has experienced a trend toward customers wanting a more individualized experience, and 70 percent have experienced this trend from employees.
• Nearly two-thirds of managers say the shift is a growing challenge in their ability to compete more effectively.
• Less than one in five C-level executives gave their organization an “A” in its ability to offer highly individualized customer or employee experiences.
• Their biggest weaknesses are their abilities to: turn on a dime in response to change or opportunity, offer highly individualized products/services, and respond effectively to changing market conditions.

There were, of course, some fluctuations in percentages from one industry to another. For example, 100 percent of communications and hospitality executives have noticed this customer trend toward wanting a more individualized experience, as compared with other industries, and utility executives were the most likely to respond that Era I expectations are impacting their ability to compete.

Individualization is a growing challenge for utilities
Utilities executives’ responses regarding the trend itself mirrored those of other industries, with 87 percent reporting customers wanting a more individualized experience, and 73 percent experiencing the same trend with employees. However, a full 82 percent – the highest of any of the 10 industries surveyed by a full nine percent – say the shift is a growing challenge in their ability to compete effectively. Further, only 20 percent of utility respondents rated their organization’s ability to offer highly individualized customer or employee experiences an ‘A.’

A deeper dive into the Era I utilities industry survey results turned up the following:

• There are many missed opportunities for utility customer individualization. Many utility respondents indicated that their organizations did not currently offer on-demand order fulfillment (83 percent), self-service options from the device of choice (73 percent), individualized content (63 percent) and intuitive online experiences (63 percent).
• The utility employee individualization numbers are comparable, with organizations not currently offering to employees self-service options from the device of choice (83 percent), data analytics (70 percent), a flexible work environment (67 percent) and industry-specific applications (67 percent).

There weren’t many surprises in the areas chosen by utility executives as offering the greatest opportunities for their organizations to take advantage of more individualized content, products, and services for their customers and/or their employees. These included: 

• Use mobile technologies for individual field employee productivity (53 percent)
• Simplify doing business with the utility process through enhanced self-service options (43 percent)
• Enable customers by offering customized solutions to optimize cost and convenience (37 percent)
• Deliver employee development programs to empower our diverse (i.e., aging) workforce (37 percent)
• Use social media channels to actively engage with customers, per their preference (17 percent)

A few years ago, using social media to more fully engage their customers was still in early adoption stages at many utilities. Today, however, many utilities have harnessed the value of Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn and other social media channels not only for customer engagement, but also for outage communications as well as for customer acquisition and retention (for competitive energy retailers). Some are even beginning to use social media channels to improve internal utility business processes. The low percentage response in the Era I study to using social media as a customer engagement tool may well reflect the fact that it is already entrenched in many utilities’ business and communication processes now.

Using the cloud to deliver individualized experiences
The Era I report’s utilities snapshot also revealed a strong correlation between the cloud and a utility’s capability to act more fully upon customer and employee individualization efforts. In fact, 97 percent of utility respondents said they believed that there is an important link between cloud-based IT solutions and their organization’s ability to deliver individualized employee and customer experiences.

Oracle Utilities saw similar results in its recent study, On Cloud Now: Cloud Technologies are Here for Utilities. Conducted by Zpryme on our behalf, the cloud study surveyed 100 electric, gas and water utility executives and directors about their cloud objectives, and found that 45 percent of utilities surveyed were already using cloud technologies in some areas of their organization, and a further 52 percent are making plans to do so, for a total of 97 percent looking seriously at cloud-based IT technologies.

Of the cloud survey group, 53 percent cited a need for rapid innovation as the top characteristic of different utility business areas that would make them strong candidates for the cloud.

There are still obstacles to be tackled
There are definite challenges to ‘turning on a dime’ for utilities who want to offer more individualized experiences for customers and for employees. For one, the utilities industry is highly regulated, and there are many restrictions to what types of services can and cannot be offered by utilities to their customers. As well, utilities are facing mounting demands upon them: demands of the changing customer relationship, demands around big data, environmental and financial demands, demands around the types of generation to be used to create electricity in the future, and demands caused by customer-owned resources at the grid’s edge. Through all of this, they continue to look for opportunities to provide new value in the ways in which they interact with their customers and strategically operate their infrastructures.

Utility responses to the Era I survey reflect these challenges. When asked what the biggest obstacles the utilities industry faces in delivering more individualized content, products and/ or services, they responded this way:

• Regulatory constraints (67 percent)
• Budget/cost constraints (40 percent)
• Security concerns (40 percent)
• Developing customer value within a commoditized industry, where price drives customer behavior (27 percent)
• Addressing typical reputation challenges (20 percent)
• Building customer relationships in a low-engagement sector (20 percent)

Looking forward
It is clear across the board, in every industry surveyed, that “business as usual” will no longer cut it in The Age of the Individual. Increasing digitization of all industries— backed by strong analytics applications providing actionable information quickly and by cloud technologies providing the ability to increase an organization’s flexibility and innovate more quickly—is paving the way for a real step-change in enterprises’ ability to provide more individualized customer and employee experiences and engagement.
 

About the Author

Bradley Williams is vice president of industry strategy, Oracle Utilities. Williams is responsible for Oracle’s smart grid strategy as well as utility solutions for outage management, advanced distribution management, mobile workforce management, work and asset management, and OT analytics. Williams has spent the last 30 years driving innovation in the utility industry in roles, including T&D power system engineering, technology development, asset management, and industry analyst.