It’s globally acknowledged that the future is decarbonised, decentralised and digitised. The challenge resides in the fact that this transition is bigger than anything previously experienced, as well as the prevailing uncertainty concerning how it will play out. It’s time to focus on ‘CREATE-DELIVER-ENGAGE’ to become an Experience Company.
Technology evolution, distributed energy resources (DER) and customer preferences are creating a second era of business models. These new models are characterised by the emergence of micro markets within the sector – storage, rooftop solar, e-mobility – as well as individual customers gradually discovering energy source control and consumption through advanced technology. Consumers are becoming increasingly aware that in order to keep living “The Good Life”, changing from “living big” to “living smarter” will be crucial. Sustainability will become more than just a buzzword, as more and more people begin to make conscious choices concerning energy consumption and renewable energy.
The pursuit of low carbon options in other aspects of the energy sector, are set to change the shape of the overall demand on the power system and at the same time introduce new sources of flexibility. The emergence of business applications and monetisation of DER depends on many factors, such as broader electricity market design and energy policy, regional resource availability and the penetration level of DER.
Customers at the heart of the change
In today’s era of the insatiable ‘chargeable-life’ with an incessant need for uninterrupted everywhere-connectivity, traditional energy and utilities companies realises the importance of customer engagement. Rapidly evolving expectations influenced by other industries, self-serving and invisible customer SLAs, distributed energy resources, personalisation, and a core shift of power and choice – from the seller to the buyer – has created a need for transformative change and a new type of experience provider. Customers, commercial and industrial players transform to become vital parts of the energy market, they will be at the heart of change.
Utilities look at themselves differently to succeed in this new marketplace and achieving mass personalisation with a lifestyle experience approach is the key to that. They need to create, deliver and engage services seamlessly, in an automated way and without error across all their channels. Historically the market dynamic been about selling and connecting through a centralised driven process. Now the game is changing to become decentralised and empowering the customers choice. Now its time for the industry to unlock the potential of a customer-centric and data-driven business, implementing an IT architecture where customer service and product innovation becomes the DNA for customer experience.
To be an Experience Provider, customers need to feel what real experience is all about. It`s about looking at it from the customer’s perspective. Tomorrow’s customers want to:
- Be informed and empowered
- Have more options
- Buy on their terms, not the vendor’s terms
- Feel that their service provider is leading the way
- Benefit from personalised prices, service and offers
- Consume environmentally and socially responsible, in a worry-free way
Focus on ‘CREATE-DELIVER-ENGAGE’ to become an Experience Company
For existing vendors to transform into an experience company, it’s probably not an option to turn everything upside down, as you have current business to look after. The preferred model lays in incremental innovation and co-development instead of hyped disruptions. Incremental development is more affordable, feasible and also sustainable. The happier utilities make customers by creating a wide choice of attractive services, letting customers access services via the channels they select and ensuring service quality is maximised, the less service utilities will have to perform manually.
The Hansen Create-Deliver-Engage Suite is a set of software applications that powers today´s energy and utilities companies to become the next digitally-driven experience companies. Hansen products meet the challenges of becoming experience companies while enabling business growth through incremental pragmatic innovation.