More than 1,100 atten­dees rep­re­sent­ing 190 dif­fer­ent util­i­ty com­pa­nies from 23 coun­tries gath­ered in San Diego for three days focused on how to get the most from their SAP sys­tems at the SAP for Util­i­ties con­fer­ence. Atten­dees rep­re­sent­ed all types of util­i­ties — both pub­lic and pri­vate — includ­ing gas, elec­tric, water and waste­water, com­mu­ni­ca­tions, and renewables. 

It was a col­le­gial and live­ly crowd that came ready to share new ideas with old acquain­tances, includ­ing at a speed net­work­ing ses­sion that kept going strong after its offi­cial end. After a day of pre-con­fer­ence ses­sions on top­ics such as SAP S/4HANA tran­si­tions, SAP Cloud for Util­i­ties, intel­li­gent asset man­age­ment, and archi­tect­ing the intel­li­gent enter­prise, atten­dees were ready for two sol­id days of keynotes, pre­sen­ta­tions, and prod­uct demos. 

Major Trends for SAP Cus­tomers in Utilities

ASUG CEO Geoff Scott kicked off the day one keynote by dis­cussing the three key trends that sur­faced in ASUG research on the util­i­ties indus­try: decid­ing whether to migrate to SAP S/4HANA, man­ag­ing data and ana­lyt­ics, and respond­ing to cus­tomer demands. 

Scott shared that 28% of par­tic­i­pants in our study work at orga­ni­za­tions that are adopt­ing SAP S/4HANA. He encour­aged, ​“Go find these indi­vid­u­als while you’re here and talk with them.” He men­tioned Salt Riv­er Project, Domin­ion Ener­gy, and NRG as just a few of the pre­sen­ters speak­ing about their SAP S/4HANA projects. Oth­ers includ­ed Nation­al Grid, Cle­co Hold­ings, and Sno­homish Coun­ty PUD. ​“We’re here to help you build a busi­ness case for migra­tion,” Scott said. 

Dis­rup­tion Shak­ing Up Utilities

It didn’t take long for the theme of dis­rup­tion to arise. SAP Nation­al Vice Pres­i­dent Michael O’Donnell men­tioned just some of the fac­tors cur­rent­ly shak­ing up the util­i­ties space, includ­ing dereg­u­la­tion, decar­boniza­tion, and height­ened con­sumer expec­ta­tions. ​“What got us here will not get us there,” O’Donnell not­ed, call­ing out the need for new busi­ness mod­els that can adapt to trends like bidi­rec­tion­al ener­gy flow and real-time cus­tomer engage­ment, as just a few examples. 

SAP’s Chief Cus­tomer Inno­va­tion Offi­cer Eric Stein reit­er­at­ed the inflec­tion point that many SAP cus­tomers are reach­ing. Describ­ing how orga­ni­za­tions have large­ly spent the last few decades opti­miz­ing their sys­tems, ​“Now both inter­nal and exter­nal expec­ta­tions are com­ing togeth­er for the first time in a gen­er­a­tion,” Stein said. ​“So many indus­tries are changing…that it’s not just about the tech­nol­o­gy, it’s how you reach the cus­tomer and the employ­ee through moments that matter.”

Infra­struc­ture Enhance­ments and Tough Questions

Oth­er keynote ses­sions includ­ed a stand-up rou­tine from come­di­an Jay Leno, who referred to the util­i­ties indus­try in a lat­er Q&A ses­sion. He men­tioned his hope that the U.S. would intro­duce a pro­gram sim­i­lar to the Peace Corp focused on rebuild­ing the country’s infrastructure. 

Kat Cole, Chief Oper­at­ing Offi­cer and Pres­i­dent of FOCUS Brands, held the room’s atten­tion on day two as she told the sto­ry of how she turned around the strug­gling Cinnabon brand and became its CEO by ask­ing three crit­i­cal ques­tions of the organization: 

• What can we get rid of that cus­tomers no longer val­ue or use? 
• When do we say no? 
• What is the one thing we can do dif­fer­ent­ly that would improve the business?

Cus­tomers Shar­ing Project Knowledge
More than 90% of the ses­sions at SAP for Util­i­ties were cus­tomer-led — many of which were stand­ing room only this year. Ses­sions con­cen­trat­ed on crit­i­cal areas of the util­i­ties busi­ness includ­ing the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence, oper­a­tional excel­lence, dig­i­tal strat­e­gy, and data and analytics. 

Charge Any­where, Pay Once

Christo­pher Swartz of San Diego Gas & Elec­tric shared a close-to-home sto­ry about how the com­pa­ny is launch­ing its Pow­er Your Dri­ve elec­tric vehi­cle (EV) charg­ing pro­gram in antic­i­pa­tion of California’s ambi­tious green­house gas emis­sion reduc­tion goals for 2030.

The util­i­ty is using capa­bil­i­ties in SAP S/4HANA to deliv­er a sim­ple, seam­less cus­tomer expe­ri­ence for what is actu­al­ly a high­ly complex/​technical process for staff on the back end. ​“This project required us to touch 250 dif­fer­ent busi­ness process­es, inte­grate 85 sys­tems, and replace 45 sys­tems,” Swartz said. It involved non­stan­dard data that need­ed to be man­aged in real time, includ­ing cus­tomer and vari­able elec­tric­i­ty pric­ing data. Cus­tomers who use the EV charg­ing sta­tions will be billed direct­ly through their exist­ing util­i­ties accounts. 

“Rarely do we get these types of oppor­tu­ni­ties to not just trans­form our tech­nol­o­gy, but our entire busi­ness mod­el,” Swartz said. He cred­it­ed the guid­ing prin­ci­ples for the project as a way the orga­ni­za­tion set the tone for its suc­cess. San Diego Gas & Elec­tric will be test­ing the new pro­gram through the end of 2019 in antic­i­pa­tion of its 2020 launch. 

Util­i­ties, Know Your Customers

Anoth­er stand­out pre­sen­ta­tion told the sto­ry of Duke Energy’s mul­ti­year trans­for­ma­tion project built on the data and insights the util­i­ty has been col­lect­ing from its cus­tomers. Retha Hun­sick­er described how the Cus­tomer Con­nect pro­gram is foun­da­tion­al to how the util­i­ty is trans­form­ing its cus­tomer expe­ri­ence. The utility’s five-year project kicked off in 2018 with design think­ing exer­cis­es to build cus­tomer jour­neys and hit its first go-live in June 2019. 

The project start­ed with some sur­pris­ing learn­ings for the Duke team. ​“We thought cus­tomers want­ed their pow­er com­pa­ny to be at the back of their mind,” Hun­sick­er said. ​“It turned out to be the oppo­site. As a result, per­son­al­iza­tion has become a theme across the entire Cus­tomer Con­nect project. And you can’t deliv­er per­son­al­iza­tion with­out know­ing your customer.” 

The three imper­a­tives of the pro­gram reflect this: give cus­tomers con­trol to use Duke the way they want to, help them self-edu­cate where they want to, and use the Net Pro­mot­er Score (NPS) to under­stand what cus­tomers are expe­ri­enc­ing and what they val­ue. Duke Ener­gy was hon­ored with one of the 2019 SAP Indus­try Inno­va­tion Awards for Excel­lence in Cus­tomer Service. 

Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence (AI) Inter­prets the Inter­net of Meters

To a packed room, John O’Connor, prin­ci­pal prod­uct man­ag­er at Amer­i­can Water, described how the util­i­ty built a meter oper­a­tions app that reduced faulty read­ings and false pos­i­tives by 90%. ​“Our meters are our cash reg­is­ters,” O’Connor said. ​“Most are AMR meters that we dri­ve our trucks by to pick up read­ings. But some­times those com­mu­ni­ca­tions fail, and the meters send error codes.” 

He explained how the largest pub­licly trad­ed water and waste­water util­i­ty com­pa­ny in the U.S. made sense of the mas­sive amount of data it col­lects from its water meters using arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI) built into a new app. The app tracks a vari­ety of sce­nar­ios rang­ing from meter tam­per­ing to improp­er­ly installed meters or out-of-the-ordi­nary water con­sump­tion pat­terns. ​“We know when our cus­tomers go to work and when they come home based on their indi­vid­ual con­sump­tion pat­terns, and we can send them an alert if some­thing looks unusu­al,” O’Connor explained. 

“This project was born as a big data prob­lem. There is no way we could ever employ enough human ana­lysts to ana­lyze this data, so we need to rely on tech­nol­o­gy for help,” he said. ​“AI and machine learn­ing are about look­ing for pat­terns and rec­og­niz­ing them.” Now, the util­i­ty is reduc­ing the cost of its ser­vice calls and pri­or­i­tiz­ing meter issues by risk and poten­tial rev­enue loss with the extra intel­li­gence it has on its meters.

“Every­thing old is new again. The Indus­tri­al Rev­o­lu­tion hap­pened with humans and machines work­ing side by side,” O’Connor said. ​“AI today exists to take on repet­i­tive, mean­ing­less tasks so the humans can focus on strat­e­gy and relationships.” 

Save the date to join us Octo­ber 18 – 20, 2020 in San Diego for our next SAP for Util­i­ties event.