Demand is soaring for utilities services—driven by sustainability, CX, and data

• We asked the 13 service providers profiled in the HFS Utilities Services Top 10, 2022 report to assess the change in demand for their services across the utilities value chain during the past 12 months on a scale from +5 (a significant increase) to -5 (a significant decline).
• Demand is increasing across the whole value chain. We’re seeing the fastest growth in demand for midstream distribution and metering, and downstream marketing and retail services. There is standout growth for smart grid services, asset performance management, meter data management, metering and billing, customer experience (CX), and digital meter-to-cash.
• This mirrors the dominance of the energy transition and competing demands—namely customer engagement and making better use of data for all manner of outcomes—throughout this study; broader competing industry demands are borne out in an increase in demand across the value chain for technology and business process services.
• This also matches our latest Pulse survey data from 63 Global 2000 energy and utilities execs: 80% expect a software spending increase and 71% expect an IT budget increase. Finding new customers and markets, better using data, adopting emerging tech, and improving staff digital fluency are some of the key initiatives anticipated.
• The utilities industry is faced with fundamental, competing, and interlinked transitions: from fossil fuel to renewable energy generation, broader sustainability across value chains, adoption of digital and more intelligent technologies, the cybersecurity of nationally critical operations, COVID-19’s effect on enterprise and consumer utilities behaviors, questions over what to do with existing assets, and a continuing need to drive efficiencies throughout operations.

The Bottom Line: Utilities firms and their service providers need to balance the energy transition and the multiple, competing, interlinked transitions. They must meticulously align their roadmaps to outcomes, solving business challenges, and position under the global context. Underpinning this change must be focused services and technology throughout the value chain that includes partnerships across ecosystems.