Guest Post: Best Practices for Managing Technological Change in the Utility Industry
Guest post by Seyi Fabode, Founder / Product and Go-To-Market Strategy, at Varuna
The water utility industry is slow in its adoption of technology. But change the industry must. The new type of consumer demands it (push) and it is what technology wants (pull). Caught in the middle of this push and pull is a cadre of management that is struggling with understanding who the new consumer is and is hampered by the bureaucracy and hierarchical decision-making process in an environment where speed is crucial. Centralized decision making in a networked world is a recipe for continued failure to serve customers optimally. What does suboptimal customer service look like? In the water industry, it is poor quality water and in the power industry, it is a failure to move quickly to sustainable sources of electricity. Built on a premise that the utility’s role was to provide stable service reliably and, safely, the utility system (and the industry), has failed to adapt to a time where the consumer’s definition of service has grown exponentially.
What is required is a decision-making approach that facilitates speed without compromising on the need to continue to provide potable water or stable power safely and reliably (as newly defined by the consumer). The new approach should factor in the 4P’s and weigh the impact of any new technology based on these four factors below by asking some critical questions. There are a few more questions than the ones listed below and I cover these in the coming ebook ‘Managing Technological Change in the Water Utility Industry’.
- People: How will the new technology impact consumers and employees?
- Product: How does the new technology change the product we are providing?
- Performance: Do our processes change as a result of this new technology?
- Policy: What are the policy implications of adopting this new technology?
A comprehensive risk and response prioritization assessment of the answers to the questions above is critical for success in an increasingly networked world. This enables the development of a simple radar chart that enables the manager to make the case for the right projects to be implemented at the right speed. An example radar chart for Augmented Reality (AR) is shown below. As easily seen, employees and processes are most affected by AR. This is due to the possibility to train a new employee to address the skills shortage that is quickly becoming a big problem in utilities across the country.
Simple heuristics like the 4Ps also provide a mindset modification to favor speed over ‘paralysis by analysis’. A much-needed mindset change in the industry. As the industry moves to a distributed structure, as consumers request a deeper and more customized experience from their utility providers and as technology advances at all layers (from the infrastructure to the interaction layer) the ‘glacial-response-while-we-collect-bills-business-as-usual’ approach of the utility will no longer work.
It’s what technology wants and what customers absolutely deserve. And you and I know that technology eventually gets its way because customers will just go and get those services from someone else using those new technologies…
