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POWERING UP the utilities Energy DB Results partners with businesses, to ensure they can sustainably transition from strategy to reality. Offering strategic advice and digital solutions, it leverages the latest in technology to drive successful results – and in the utilities Energy, now more than ever, this means unlocking the value in data to manage risk and maximise asset and customer value
Written by Sarah Megginson Produced by Josef Smith
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ooftop solar combined with efficient battery storage and smart energy management solutions represent just one of myriad ways that digital disruption is set to transform the utilities sector, and according to Matt Nidd, General Manager – Utilities, DB Results, there’s a real risk that companies who fail to innovate will be left behind. “Technology and regulatory change effectively means that what was always a commodity – the delivery of energy – is being further commoditised . For instance, now even the residential meter data itself is becoming a commodity, thanks to the new Power of Choice initiative,” he explains. Given all components of the Retail value chain are available as a service, the barriers to entry into this market are lower than ever making it especially vulnerable to disruption. “This leaves customers wondering: why do I need to have a relationship with an energy provider and why I can’t I buy energy with my phone plan? For electricity retailers, this means it’s essential that you
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Matt Nidd General Manager, Utilities
Matt is responsible for running consulting operations, growing the utility advisory capability, strengthening quality delivery and developing new service offerings. He manages a large team of professionals to drive growth, solution design, capability, innovation, alliances, analyst relations, service delivery and operations. His team is responsible for providing mission critical services to many of Asia Pacific’s leading utility businesses. Matt has 20 years of experience in utility businesses and technologies. He is experienced in building and managing globally distributed and diverse teams, and program delivery with sound technical knowledge in the utility domain. He has indepth experience in strategic planning, driving operational efficiencies, compliance reporting, deployment of large scale projects and managing P&L. He has worked extensively with clients to help them assess, deploy and manage world class technology solutions. Matt is also a recognised speaker and panelist at national and international utility industry conferences.
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know your customers better, so you can offer better value and a range of ‘stickier’ products and services. And you can only do that by having rich data to leverage.” Deriving value from data, unsurprisingly, is where the utilities sector has its focus, and it’s where DB Results can step in as a digital integration partner, offering advisory and implementation services. 6
With the impending commoditisation of mass market metering in Australia, DB Results is helping many key players in the industry to develop clear strategies to meet the next wave of change: Power of Choice. As the Australian electricity market continues to evolve, Power of Choice will drive a further callto-action and associated step change in churn, one of the energy
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industry’s bedrock components. “The data available from this meter is incredibly powerful… The value is clearly going to be in the data, as it allows market participants to drive meaningful insights, so they can create a better customer experience and manage energy supply more efficiently,” Nidd says. While Power of Choice will challenge utilities distributors’ traditional,
regulated funding model, it also opens up many opportunities for new market entrants and those retailers who are ready to innovate with new service lines. “Power of Choice is effectively about enabling customers to have more granular access to energy usage w w w. d b re s u l t s . c o m . a u
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“Technology effectively means that what was previously a commodity – the delivery of energy – is actually being commoditized further” – Matt Nidd, General Manager, Utilities
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information, so they can make more informed decisions and ultimately reduce consumption and manage cost. This is facilitated by enabling retailers, rather than distributors, the opportunity to offer consumers a smart meter bundle – including a way to view that data, such as an online portal presence where they can look at that data and make decisions about usage,” Nidd says.
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DB Results Annual Revenue
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“Obviously, it’s beneficial to everyone to use less power and put less pressure on the grid overall, and this process starts with the data. Data is at the core of everything. Consumers can use this data to look at shifting usage and moving to ‘time of use’ offers. With access to this kind of data, retailers can overlay other energy related products and services such as energy efficient appliances, bundled
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solar and storage and even insurance to create a deeper relationship”. As an industry thought leader, DB Results aims to leverage its utilities experience in this challenging marketplace, to help energy providers develop options for a Power of Choice response strategy. It’s already a very competitive marketplace and according to Nidd, it’s about to become even more
crowded – and much more disrupted. It’s those utilities providers who are ready to innovate and who embrace a more flexible business model that will survive and thrive in the long term, he adds. “Being an energy retailer is becoming less of a specialised field and now with this detailed data stream available, I think the large amount of
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INTERNET OF THINGS | DIGITAL METERING OPERATIONAL TECHNOLOGY
Australia’s leading Operational Technology company for utilities having successfully delivered some of Australia’s largest IOT, Digital Metering and SCADA projects.
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From strategy and business case development to program management and technical expertise - we can help you deliver a successful outcome. Inte Interested in transforming your Operational Technology space? Contact us to arrange a meeting.
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Accelerating time-to-value with advanced integration, data analytics and global engineering Our Service Offerings Include: Industrial IoT Advanced operational analytics Multi-shore software engineering
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infrastructure around traditional retailers are doing really interesting retailers will become a less things, like allowing consumers to sustainable business model,” he says. pre-buy energy. There are energy “Adding to that, we’ve still got over clubs, where you pay a $20 per month 20 percent customer churn in Victoria membership and in exchange, you and we’re likely to see churn in New get access to wholesale rates. There South Wales ratchet up with Power are other models that we’re seeing out of Choice, as it creates a new call where people are being incentivised to to action. Customers are not use less energy to get discounts sticky in this sector. At the on other goods and same time the cost to services,” Nidd says. acquire and the cost “Being able to to service are going manage such a up, while the profits diverse and valueare going down. It’s driven range of only going to get products, more Number of more competitive.” easily, with richer data Employees at The immediate and via a digital portal, DB Results solution to this is means that the traditional for retailers to become model will change materially.” savvier with their offering. In order to meet the complex and Those who think outside of the ever-changing needs of their client box to deliver bundled energy, base, DB Results works with a select gas and solar products, or who group of key partners which Nidd offer more services overall, stand describes as “key to our strategy”. to benefit most, as the traditional “One is a platform as a service retail tariff model will only appeal named OutSystems – it’s a powerful “as a very low value product”. a rapid application development “Some of the more innovative platform that really underpins
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D B R E S U LT S
“The large amount of infrastructure around traditional retailers will become a less sustainable business model” – Matt Nidd, General Manager, Utilities
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October 2016
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our digital play,” he says. “Our customers have for years been working with large transactional systems and they all want and need to respond to the customer experience by having a digital presence, and we saw this as a great solution.” The white labelled SelfServe.Cloud product leverages OutSystems to offer a best in class response for retailers wanting to offer integrated customers self-serve and energy efficiency capability without the overheads of being coupled to traditional customer care and billing solutions. The second is Bit Stew Systems, creators of the market-leading platform for Software Defined Operations for the Industrial Internet, which sets out to improve utility operations and asset performance in the fields of smart metering and smart grid operations. “For our customers, who are wanting to leverage the large volumes of data in their transactional systems for better asset and customer outcomes, Bitstew has demonstrated a superior data integration and
visualisation capability. This is especially so for utilities. Coupled with our services partner OSI and their deep data integration and analytics background we are particularly excited about the future of this offering” Nidd says. Where we are helping our customers with an end-to-end approach to remediating or developing complex meter and communications solutions our partner Operational Technology Solutions (OTS) have enabled us to have the market leading engineering capability required to be successful in this space. This has been particularly evident in OTS’s ability to remediate a complex point-to-point metering communications solution whilst simultaneously overlaying a contingent solution and trialling market leading data acquisition capabilities across both technologies. We are confident that the ecosystem we have developed with these partners positions us well to support our customers to change their businesses sustainably, now and in the future.
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303 Collins Street Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 3000 Tel. +61 3 8630 0000 Fax. +61 3 8630 0099 www.dbresults.com.au