NOVEMBER 2019CIOAPPLICATIONS.COM8The Road to Becoming a Digital Utilityt Southern California Edison, we recognize that the utility business is undergoing an accelerated period of change--potentially more transformative than the cumulated changes of the last 100 years. And, information technology is a critical component of this re-conceptualization of the way we provide energy to our customers. We must transform into a digital utility and advance our capabilities--reinventing our systems, processes and skills to reflect the technological landscape of 2018--and steer strategically into the digital landscape for the rest of the 21st century. Our strategic vision is customer-centric; we are empowering customers and their service providers to accelerate customers' return on investment in clean-energy technologies, opening new markets and value streams for clean-energy service providers and collaborating with customers to access reliability services for an increasingly complex distribution system. By starting with the question, "What will our customers need?" we are looking at strategic platforms that will adapt to rapid change and near-real-time communications as customers gain increasing energy choices.We see four primary movers for change in the IT space: First, customer expectations and needs are evolving; second, the pace of technological change is accelerating dramatically; third, information technologies are becoming an integral part of operational, service provider and customer technologies; and fourth, the basic tenets of the utility mission to safely provide reliable and affordable power must be protected and improved even as we transition our technologies. Customer expectations for real-time personalized information Connected and smart devices have increased customers' expectation for on-demand access to all relevant information in real time on the digital platform of their choice. Today's customers, both business and residential, also expect their experience to be transparent and specifically tailored to their home or business. They want comprehensible, personalized usage data that guides them through their bills as well as proactive communications on outages. The customer expectation that information be available on any device, anytime and anywhere requires IT teams to ensure that systems enabling the customer experience leverage the entire modern, mobile, analytic, cloud and security tools and technologies of a digital native company. The accelerating pace of technological changeThe increasing expectations for transformative solutions from customers, regulators and clean-energy vendors require utilities and conventional utility vendors to reduce procurement and product development cycles. This means TODD INLANDER, VP & CIO, SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA EDISONAIn My Opinion
< Page 7 | Page 9 >