FROM CRISIS TO

CONQUEST IN
UTILITIES
AUDIO TRANSCRIPT

SANJEEV ARORA SPARKING A CHANGE

Managing director and client group lead-
Resources The global energy sector is undergoing a
Accenture In India significant transformation—rapidly depleting
conventional energy sources are being
SANDEEP DUTTA gradually replaced by renewable, sustainable
Managing director and sales lead and clean energy. This transformation has
Accenture in India triggered a disruption in the utilities industry.
Increasing penetration of renewables,
AMIT KHURMA distributed energy generation and energy
Managing director-Utilities efficiency evolution have resulted in volatility
Accenture In India and price hike, impacting demand and
investment. For utilities in India though, these
ANURAG JOHRI challenges are compounded with existing
Senior Principal – Resources CG institutional problems in the power sector.
Accenture In India These include:

Helping the utilities sector in India outmaneuver Number 1: DISCOMS are losing money
uncertainty by becoming digital enterprises because of high Aggregate Technical and
Commercial (AT&C) losses of approximately 20
The utilities sector has always been at the percent
forefront of preparedness to deal with changing
situations, natural disasters and economic Number 2: A supply-demand mismatch and
impacts. However, like most industries, COVID- regional imbalances are leading to frequent
19 caught utilities off guard and plunged them outages
into a state of limbo. As the keeper of lifeline
services, how can utilities, especially DISCOMS, Number 3: Developers trying to set up solar or
maintain business continuity and show resiliency wind farms are facing slow pace of greener
during the pandemic and beyond? The answer transmission corridor buildup due to Right of
lies in embracing digital technologies, smart Way issues and financial challenges
devices and data analytics.
The COVID-19 situation also witnessed the CHALLENGE NUMBER 1: THE IMPACT ON
white-collar workforce moving fromtier-1 cities to POWER GENERATION
either semi-urban or rural areas to work from
home. These areas, which were being earlier With the lockdown confining people to their
neglected by the DISCOMS, will now require a homes, the demand for power has shifted from
more robust and reliable power supply network. industrial and commercial (I&C) customer
As a result, these areas will need more segments to residential segments, leading to a
investments to upgrade the transmission and significant drop in the overall demand. As a
distribution network as well as bring changes to result, power generation companies have been
the Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) contracts forced to either shut down specific units within
to ensure uninterrupted power supply, thereby the power plant or operate at a very low Plant
affecting all players in the power value chain. Load Factor (PLF), as low as 50 percent in
some cases, making them economically
REKINDLING GROWTH,THE SMART WAY unviable.

The situation is grave, no doubt. However, CHALLENGE NUMBER 2: THE IMPACT ON

there’s a lot utilities can still do to turn around TRANSMISSION
their business, have business continuity and
build resiliency for their people, processes and It’s not been easy for the transmission
systems. One of them is by becoming digital companies too. The lockdown restrictions have
enterprises—embracing digital technologies to triggered a significant drop in power
drive high levels of efficiencies into their consumption, making the transmission process
business operations. Here are four focus areas financially unviable.
where utilities can use the power of digital
technologies to outpace change and thrive. Adding to the woes are severe operational
challenges caused by the unavailability of
FOCUS AREA NUMBER 1: SMART skilled workforce and supply chain interruptions.
METERING ACCELERATION
CHALLENGE NUMBER 3: THE IMPACT ON
Smart meters can prove to be a game-changer DISCOMS
for India like they’ve been for many countries
around the world. The lockdown restrictions Social distancing and intra-regional travel
prevented field officers from visiting houses in restrictions meant that the customers preferred
person to collect meter readings and so most digital platforms to make their bill payments.
utilities couldn’t get power bills sent to Although some technology-savvy DISCOMS
customers. With smart meters, the entire manual have managed to offer digital touchpoint options
process can be fully automated, saving for their customers, most of them are still
DISCOMS considerable time and effort in struggling. Another point of concern is the
collecting meter readings while allowing ballooning receivables. Most of the DISCOMS
customers to adopt good energy habits by had agreed for deferred billgeneration because
tracking usage and spend. The planned rollout of the unavailability of the workforce to visit
of 5G communication networks across the each house and collect meter readings. With the
countryis expected to further enable easy pandemic happening in the summers—a period
linkage between smart meters and utility back- of high demand for power in India—the
end systems. receivables increased drastically, straining the
bottom line. Besides, the sudden hike in
The Ministry of Power is planning a country-wide unemployment, leading to payment defaults,
program to install 250– 300 million smart meters has further impacted the DISCOMS’ revenue. In
in the next few years. Accenture has designed addition, electricity consumption shifting from
the Information & Communications Technology industrial units to residential areas has also
(ICT) architecture for the smart meter rollout. affected their earnings considerably—the former
Through this engagement, we are pays much higher prices per unit of electricity as
compared to domestic consumers.
To ensure enterprise resiliency now and in the ensuring that besides catering to the India-
long term, utility companies must prioritize the specific use cases, the architecture also meets
safety of people and go the extra mile to serve the critical requirement of enterprise-and grid-
customers while anticipating and minimizing the level resilience for DISCOMS.
financial impact. The way forward for utilities is:
FOCUS AREA NUMBER 2: CONTACTLESS
Point 1: SAFETY—Account for public and CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT
employee anxiety around performing essential
work, and anticipate major secondary events The country-wide COVID-19 lockdowns forced
(e.g., seismic, weather, cyber, etc..) people to avoid visiting billing/ customer care
centers in person and, instead, embrace online
Point 2: COMMUNICATION—Provide options to make payments. As a result, many
transparent and consistent communication to all DISCOMS saw a significant jump in online bill
internal and external stakeholders payments. Quick to realize the changing
customer preferences, the companies
Point 3: SUPPLY CHAIN—engage strategy and encouraged customers to go digital by making
risk management to reimagine projects and necessary arrangements to facilitate an
related implications unhindered online payment experience. This
transition further boosts the government’s
Point 4: WORKPLACE ACCESS—Initiate nation-wide initiatives to promote digital
planning for post pandemic return-to-work payments. Besides, there is also a thrust to
protocols, and conduct planning for best-likely- foster seamless customer engagements through
and worst-case employee absence scenarios interactive voice response (IVRs) mechanisms
to address service requests and complaints.
Point 5: SURGE DEMAND FOR CRITICAL
SERVICES—Engage with government partners Moreover, many urban consumers have started
to support planning for massive surge of new using voice-controlled devices such as Amazon
critical care facilities Alexa, Google Home and more. Utilities in the
US and Europe have already begun to use
Point 6: BUSINESS CONTINUITY—challenge if back-end billing and customer care applications
BCPs are sufficient, and continually evaluate such as CRM, IVR and in-home voice-controlled
work-from-home implications such as devices to offer seamless and integrated
productivity and cyber riskssimply wasn't customer experiences. Not just that—soon, we
possible in the on prem world. will be seeing utilities leverage advanced
technologies such as chatbots and robotic
TIME TO SHED THE LOAD process automation (RPA) to offer hyper-
personalized services to customers.
Utilities are struggling to find ways to tide over
the current crisis—whether it’s the constantly FOCUS AREA NUMBER 3: UNLOCK THE
shifting and unpredictable demand for power, POWER OF ADVANCED ANALYTICS
stoppages in transmission because of the lack of
funds or labor, or lower bill payment collections Utilities are inundated with data coming from
due to restrictions in fieldwork. Here are three various channels – transmission, distribution,
key challenges the utilities industry needs to consumption, assets, geographical locations
overcome to drive sustainability and growth in its and more. The challenge is how to tap useful
operations. data and generate actionable insights on
consumption, losses, theft, consumer behavior,
demand-supply balance and beyond. The
answer lies in harnessing data analytics. And by
doing so, DISCOMS can derive deeper insights
from grids, infrastructure and external sources
to improve network functions while reducing
cost and inefficiencies and enhancing customer-
centricity.
For example, Accenture built a COVID-19 HIGH-POWERED TRANSFORMATION–
dashboard that gives DISCOMS a 360-degree STRATEGIC INITIATIVES
view into the critical areas of power distribution
and consumption, such as consumer trends, While each utility will have different needs and
outages, supply levels and more, enabling requirements for workplace and people
executives to take fast and accurate decisions. management, customer service and business
The dashboard leverages the power of data to continuity, Accenture recommends the following
give information about locked down areas and approach to address the immediate challenges.
the number of factories or industries that have
been shut down there. This information helps NUMBER 1: ORGANIZE A COORDINATED
DISCOMS predict demand better and take RESPONSE
appropriate actions.
A crisis such as this requires a far more
Accenture also teamed up with one of the New harmonized response, where every employee,
Delhi-based DISCOMS to understand consumer whether C-suite staff or field crew, know their
behavior and consumption trends for plugging roles and responsibilities. Utilities/DISCOMs
revenue leakages. We helped them identify must channel their attention toward strategic
electricity pilferage and each consumer’s guidance, broad priorities and mitigation of legal
probability to default by performing advanced or policy issues. A single, cross-functional
analytics on consumer complaints and payment response mechanism will foster better
behavior. As a result, the DISCOM is now in a coordination among field crews, call centers and
better position to minimize revenue leakage on control room operators.
account of non-payment of dues.
NUMBER 2: CREATE A FUTURE PLANNING
FOCUS AREA NUMBER 4: ENABLE TEAM
WORKFORCE PRODUCTIVITY
The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the
As the economy starts to open up, utilities must world has been far more complicated than a
put in place strict back-to-work guidelines that typical natural disaster. Therefore, utilities must
include adherence to social distancing, workers’ adopt countermeasures that are modeled on
safety, and proactive incident prevention and different scenarios and their impact on the
management. Some of the important things current and future business landscape, helping
companies must consider are: them identify critical gaps and thereby enable in
developing robust short and long-term
POINT 1: Manage work with a limited workforce strategies. These measures must also leverage
and monitor health remotely with IoT and mobile tools and methods to simulate and plan
field force devices impending emergencies such as storms, floods
and grid imbalances.
POINT 2: Enable the remote workforce to
monitor, assign and execute customer requests NUMBER 3: PARTNER WITH
STAKEHOLDERS
POINT 3: Equip field workers with GIS-based
location tracking system, along with AR/VR Restrictions on travel and people’s movement
devices and remote coaching facilities to avoid are going to stay for some time now. Hence,
people-to-people contact utilities can expect a shift in the demand for
services such as electricity and water—from
POINT 4: Make the processes contactless, commercial and industrial sectors to residential.
wherever possible This is where state and local legislators will
have to champion response priorities in the
different communities they serve. Utilities can
actively partner with varying stakeholders to
understand their needs and deliver services
effectively. Digital touchpoints and
communication could be great enablers to
establish and cement partnerships with multiple
stakeholders with minimal effort and resources.
IGNITE THE FUTURE

Utility services are the lifeline of any city, state or

country. The pandemic has brought catastrophic
disruptions to the conventional means of
generation, transmission and distribution

of public utilities. To tide over the crisis, utilities

must adopt a digital mindset—an essential
attribute of digital enterprises—to transform their
conventional ways of working and usher in a
digitally-driven work process and culture. And,
by unlocking the power of digital technologies,
smart devices and data analytics—anchored on
a robust digital roadmap—utilities can not only
emerge from the crisis but also surge ahead in
the future.

This article is written by Sanjeev Arora,

managing director and client group lead-
Resources, Accenture In India, Sandeep Dutta,
managing director and sales lead, Accenture in
India and

Amit Khurma, Managing director-Utilities,

Accenture In India and Anurag Johri, senior
principal – resources CG, Accenture In India.

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