The platform premium

For true digital converts, business and technology strategies are inseparable; energy providers’ digital platforms are, therefore, mission-critical. To enhance the experience for their customers, energy providers will need to invest in platforms that are easy for everyone to use—employees, partners, and consumers—and which can, ultimately, create growth for new products and services.

But there is widespread uncertainty about how to do this. How, for instance, can energy providers build a business case for investment in their technology platforms?

In Accenture’s Tech Vision 2021, 90% of utility executives said there was a need to fast-forward their digital transformation and cloud integration.

In our latest survey of 500 energy providers globally, half of energy providers say that speed to market and agility are “very important” to their business, up from only 14% five years ago.

To gain that agility, providers need digital platforms that are fit for purpose and that deliver the experiences that consumers need and expect. However, our latest survey also shows that many are struggling to make the business case add up.

First, energy providers need to focus relentlessly on customers’ new and emerging needs—a pillar of what Accenture describes as the Business of Experience (BX).

Utilities need to become data-driven organizations that can use customer analytics to manage data and generate insights.

To understand customer preferences across 70 countries and 24 business units, Engie, in partnership with Accenture and Salesforce, developed a unified global customer-relationship management platform. This is also good news for the energy transition: Engie’s new cloud and mobile solutions will allow it to make personalized renewable energy recommendations to customers.

These investments can drive on-going product and service innovation, and they are also critical to building the energy system of the future.

The second part of the business case is using digital to create hotspots for customer experience. Many providers have struggled to keep pace as customer expectations have evolved into seamless experiences in other sectors, such as entertainment streaming services and online retail.

The providers that are investing in platforms have two areas of focus: consumer-facing digital channels, and internal tech platforms that enable better customer analytics.

To meet these expectations, Italian multinational Enel has developed a virtual assistant for use across multiple channels. These include its website chat, Facebook, and interactive voice response (IVR)—including on smart home devices.^[1]

Longer-term, energy providers may need to consider the advent of the “metaverse” – a simulated digital environment accessed through AR/VR technology and populated by avatars. As Accenture notes in its Fjord Trends 2022, this new system will shift our digital behavior and may mark the coming of a new cultural epoch. Brands will need to understand if and how their customers will exist in this new world.

Cloud technologies are now essential to energy providers, and new cloud-native business models are emerging. A cloud-based system architecture enables energy providers to develop innovative new products and services and improve the customer experience.

Australian company Origin Energy is one of them. Under its “Cloud 2022” strategy, Origin is set to exit traditional data centers. It has already moved its customer self-service applications to the cloud through Amazon Web Services, which has simplified self-service processes for its 4 million customers; reduced the workload in its call center; and halved operating costs.^[2]

There are two ways of thinking about platforms: one is that they are an optimization tool to link together disparate products. The more fundamental view is of the platform as the business model itself; consider companies like eBay or Airbnb, which are founded on a platform-based business model. This requires thinking not just about the customer-facing element but also the back-end technology and processes that support it. These platform-based models are currently rare in the energy sector, but we can expect to see them becoming more common. Shell’s German subsidiary Sonnen, for example, offers an energy-storage system and has built a community of households that can share energy with other members.^[3]