IBM: The Smart Energy Consumer

This paper has been written by one of SGA’s inaugural board members, Jeff Lee. It looks at the transformation that has started in the energy industry – an industry that has been engineer-driven for 100 years, but today is being transformed by the customer, and what we as participants can do to benefit from this change.

Financial analysts are now saying utility stocks are moving to “risk / watch” from “defensive” due to the transformation happening in our industry that exposes earnings. External influences like pollution, cost of energy, climate change, renewable energy, independence from poles and wires etc are motivating and stimulating the customer to be active in energy alternatives.

In understanding the customer the journey could look like this:

• Instrument all the customer touchpoints and gather the right data on your customers
• Interconnect social media data, other forms of digital data and transaction data to paint a more vivid picture of each customer
• Run the right analytics at the right time, on the right customer to generate new ideas on whom to serve and how to best serve that individual
• Generate insights in real time that are predictive not just historical.
• Build the capability to do this at massive scale.

> Smart Energy Consumer