A perfect storm for data and analytics to be the future of energy and utilities

Energy Transition Talks

For decades, energy and utilities companies have invested in infrastructure to collect, store, analyze and use data. Today, savvy digital consumers and advanced cloud technologies are driving demand for timely, cost-effective data that stakeholders can access and act on. As a result, data governance is moving away from IT-centric conversations, toward business-ownership models. In this climate, what role does data governance play, who is responsible for it and how is it helping energy and utilities operations? In our latest Energy Transition Talks podcast, Peter Warren explores these questions with data and analytics experts Diane Gutiw and Paul Kulpas .

There is no lack of data in energy and utilities. The challenge is knowing where the data is, getting it quickly, making sure it's accurate and using it to drive decisions.

Several factors are driving greater demand for data in the industry, including consumer expectations, cost-effective technology and decades of investment in data collection. According to Diane Gutiw, this creates a “perfect storm for data and analytics to be the future” of the industry.

Digital consumers expect their power providers to personalize their services and offer options for smarter, greener and lower-cost energy. The cloud is another data accelerator, because it makes it easier and quicker to pull information together and present it to different stakeholders. These drivers shape and normalize stakeholders’ expectations for data that they can easily access, quickly understand and readily trust to inform their decisions and actions.

Data ownership moves from IT to business

Traditionally, data and the tools used to extract it belonged to IT. Now, business analysts and leaders are taking more ownership of data because of its business value. Energy and utility organizations are making several changes as a result. For example, they are spinning off new departments, branches and expertise (e.g., power users) focused on digitization and analytics, whereas IT now provides more of a stabilization platform and support.

Energy companies and utilities also are creating more interactive dashboards to allow executives to follow the data story and see cause-and-effect. “That's the real shift that all the technology platforms are moving towards,” notes Gutiw, “and cloud is making it faster and faster to do that.” She adds that the key is self-service, regardless of role (e.g., data scientist, business analyst, executive, etc.).

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