The pandemic as “… a springboard for growth”
There is growing recognition around the world that analytics has a huge part to play in the energy and utilities sector. It can be used to help balance the grid and manage demand against supply. For example, energy companies are now starting to use the capacity of electric vehicles as storage for energy. Elsewhere, analytics is being used to improve planned and predictive maintenance of large facilities like wind farms.
Back in March, SAS launched a new partnership with Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business to pair up students with energy industry experts at SAS, to identify unmet needs for analytics in the sector. SAS is also working with more than 500 global energy industry clients, including Scottish Power, Endesa and Red Energy. In fact, 90% of the utilities listed in the Fortune 500 use SAS. Six months on from the launch of the Duke/Fuqua partnership, what is the current situation on digital transformation in the sector? I recently had the chance to talk to Pietro Fiorini, Global Business Manager for Microsoft, to discuss just that subject. Pietro has a strong focus on utilities, especially smart metering and analytics.
A springboard for growth
Pietro commented that his clients were very much using the pandemic as a springboard for growth and transformation. Many had seen significant productivity gains during the last year to 18 months, and were planning to grow even more post-pandemic. However, he commented that most were already fully digital before the pandemic, so it had been easy to build on that.
“They used the collaboration tools they had already implemented to improve productivity as they moved 100% online. Every employee has the necessary equipment to run business applications from home. Now they are trying to understand how to adapt their buildings to keep the same level of productivity once employees are back at work. They are using aggregated behavioral data, working group dynamics, organizational network analysis and many other data and types of analysis to understand the best way to do it, always respecting privacy of workers. They will also working on change management projects to make employees learn from findings and check that the reality matches the data-driven conclusions.”
He also noted that many of his customers were starting to set up multidisciplinary teams to study how machine learning can work together with other technology.
“This is a really exciting moment because the answer to restarting after the pandemic will be to explore frontiers that had not been explored before. After the pandemic, I think everyone will be looking more towards digital. Some of the barriers to change have been broken down. There is less prejudice now and fewer excuses for not becoming digitally effective.” A means not an end
Companies that have achieved successful digital transformation have generally seen digital technology as an enabler, rather than an end in itself. In the energy sector, for example, digitalization is an enabler for electrification. Companies need to enable networking with both customers and suppliers to create dynamic networks, and support the creation of new digital products and services. There is a huge amount of data available, and more to come. In Pietro’s view, this is where artificial intelligence and machine learning will be essential.
“The real value of machine learning is to allow humans to see the right data at the right moment to enable easier and faster decision making. This is crucial as the amount of data expands.”
However, technology needs to be used in the right way, to avoid reinforcing silos. The companies that do best are those that use artificial intelligence to accelerate change and break down barriers. Pietro noted that his clients are using AI for many different purposes, but all with a common core.
“We are helping them to increase efficiency by improving the collaboration and breaking down the space and time barriers with the use of new digital technologies. Connectivity and collaboration are the key, and then the sky’s the limit. AI-driven transformations like these are capable of infinite scaling-up.” Grounding AI in an ethical foundation
Pietro also touched on the importance of a commitment to responsible AI development. He noted that it is important to be clear about the ethical impact of what you are doing. In the energy sector, this is particularly important because of the drive to decarbonization. Pietro added,
“We are committed to making sure that AI systems are developed responsibly and used in ways that earn people’s trust. Our customers support this.” The longer view
I want to thank Pietro for sharing his insights on a topic that is dominating discussions and decisions. This SAS global study is exploring accelerated transformation over the summer of 2021. We’d love to hear about your experience — please leave a comment below and let’s keep asking the right questions.
This interview is part of a recent interview study by SAS on how the pandemic has accelerated digitalization: Catch more conclusions from the study on post pandemic transformation.
Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.
