I’ve spent much of this year inter­view­ing util­i­ty tech­nol­o­gy lead­ers, SAP exec­u­tives, and the part­ners who serve the indus­try, so when I was explor­ing the util­i­ties seg­ment of ASUG’s Pulse of the SAP Cus­tomer research, I read it with those con­ver­sa­tions in mind. The 2026 edi­tion drew 663 respon­dents, includ­ing 51 from util­i­ties, and their answers sound­ed familiar.

Com­pared with the broad­er mem­ber­ship, util­i­ty respon­dents report­ed greater urgency around cyber­se­cu­ri­ty, a more delib­er­ate pos­ture toward AI, deep­er com­mit­ments to inte­gra­tion and data foun­da­tions, and a def­i­n­i­tion of project val­ue shaped by the eco­nom­ics of a reg­u­lat­ed industry.

“Pulse of the SAP Cus­tomer is our annu­al mea­sure of where mem­bers actu­al­ly stand,” said Maris­sa Gilbert, Research Direc­tor at ASUG. ​“Util­i­ties want to bench­mark against peers, so this data can be par­tic­u­lar­ly valuable.”

The AI num­bers are the most reveal­ing place to start. One-third (33%) of util­i­ty respon­dents called lever­ag­ing AI a high pri­or­i­ty for 2026, while near­ly as many (31%) called it a low pri­or­i­ty, the survey’s short­hand for orga­ni­za­tions that see the need but aren’t act­ing on it yet. Across all respon­dents, that split was 38% against 20%. Util­i­ties were also less like­ly to expect AI/ML to great­ly affect their dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion over the next two years (47%, ver­sus 53% over­all). They showed rough­ly half the inter­est in SAP Busi­ness AI (14%, ver­sus 25%).

“The util­i­ties respons­es stood out almost imme­di­ate­ly,” said Blake Bal­tazar, Asso­ciate Research Direc­tor at ASUG, who con­duct­ed the research. ​“An indus­try split­ting near­ly even on AI pri­or­i­ty typ­i­cal­ly sig­nals that orga­ni­za­tions are weigh­ing some­thing the topline num­bers can­not show.”

Bud­get pres­sure and reg­u­la­to­ry cau­tion are sure­ly part of the sto­ry, but I read this main­ly as sequenc­ing, and that squares with what I’ve heard from util­i­ty lead­ers. The same respon­dents who deferred on AI ranked inte­gra­tion with­in SAP sys­tems among their most urgent pri­or­i­ties (45%, ver­sus 35% over­all), cit­ed mas­ter data main­te­nance and gov­er­nance more often than any chal­lenge except bud­get (53%, ver­sus 45%), and rat­ed data ana­lyt­ics a high or sus­tained pri­or­i­ty at a near-unan­i­mous 96%.

Util­i­ties under­stand that AI out­comes will only be as good as the data and archi­tec­ture under­neath them, and the sur­vey sug­gests they are build­ing in that order. The line between sequenc­ing and stalling is thin, though, and it’s theirs to police.

Cyber­se­cu­ri­ty, mean­while, sits above every­thing else in the util­i­ties data. More than two-thirds (69%) of respon­dents called it a high, urgent pri­or­i­ty, 20 points above the all-indus­try fig­ure. The next-high­est util­i­ties pri­or­i­ty, SAP S/4HANA, comes in at 47%. Fold in the share treat­ing cyber­se­cu­ri­ty as a sus­tained focus, and the total climbs to 94%. For oper­a­tors of crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture, with grid secu­ri­ty now a stand­ing board­room top­ic, that’s exact­ly where the urgency belongs.

The val­ue ques­tion is where util­i­ties look least like every­one else. Just 2% of util­i­ty respon­dents mea­sure ROI on SAP projects through increased rev­enue or sales, ver­sus 18% of all respon­dents. They index instead on total cost of own­er­ship (43%, ver­sus 33%) and cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion (35%, ver­sus 26%), and they explore cost opti­miza­tion through license man­age­ment and sys­tem ratio­nal­iza­tion at near­ly twice the over­all rate (37%, ver­sus 21%). In a rate-reg­u­lat­ed busi­ness, val­ue shows up in cost dis­ci­pline and cus­tomer expe­ri­ence, and util­i­ties are mea­sur­ing their invest­ments accordingly.

None of this means util­i­ties are cool­ing on SAP. A major­i­ty (55%) of util­i­ty respon­dents report increas­ing SAP invest­ment, and 61% already run SAP S/4HANA.

These con­ver­sa­tions are about to hap­pen in per­son, with the SAP for Util­i­ties Annu­al Con­fer­ence, pre­sent­ed by ASUG, only a cou­ple of months away. The ques­tions run­ning through this research, from when an AI use case earns invest­ment to how secu­ri­ty urgency sur­vives a tight bud­get, are the same ones that fill its ses­sion rooms and hallways.

Util­i­ties have always worked through hard prob­lems by com­par­ing notes with their peers, and they do it with a can­dor most indus­tries would envy — or fear. The research tells us where the indus­try stands in 2026, and what hap­pens when this com­mu­ni­ty gets togeth­er will shape where it goes from here.