The utilities industry worldwide is experiencing growing energy demand in a world with shifting fuel availability, increasing costs, a shrinking workforce and mounting global environmental pressures. Rate case filings and government regulations, especially those regarding environmental health and safety, require utilities to streamline reporting and operate safely enterprise-wide. At the same time, increasing competition and costs drive the need for service reliability and better customer service. Each issue causes utilities to depend more and more on information technology (IT).
The Microsoft Utility team works with industry partners to create and deploy industry-specific solutions that help utilities transform challenges into opportunities and empower utilities workers to thrive in today’s market-driven environment. Solutions are based on the world’s most cost-effective, functionally rich, and secure IT platform. The Microsoft platform is interoperable with a wide variety of systems and proven to improve people’s abilities to access information and work with others across boundaries. Together, they help utilities optimize operations in each line of business.
Customer care. Whether a utility needs to modernize a call center, add customer self-service or respond to new business requirements such as green power, Microsoft and its partners provide solutions for turning the customer experience into a powerful competitive advantage with increased cost efficiencies, enhanced customer service and improved financial performance.
Transmission and distribution. Growing energy demand makes it critical to effectively address safe, reliable and efficient power delivery worldwide. To help utilities meet these needs, Microsoft and its partners offer EMS, DMS and SCADA systems; mobile workforce management solutions; project intelligence; geographic information systems; smart metering/grid; and work/asset/document management tools that streamline business processes and offer connectivity across the enterprise and beyond.
Generation. Microsoft and its partners provide utilities with a view across and into their generation operations that enables them to make better decisions to improve cycle times, output and overall effectiveness while reducing the carbon footprint. With advanced software solutions from Microsoft and its partners, utilities can monitor equipment to catch early failure warnings, measure fleets’ economic performance and reduce operational and environment risk.
Energy trading and risk management. Market conditions require utilities to optimize energy supply performance. Microsoft and its partners’ enterprise risk management and trading solutions help utilities feed the relentless energy demands in a resource-constrained world.
Regulatory compliance. Microsoft and its partners offer solutions to address the compliance requirements of the European Union; Federal Energy Regulatory Commission; North American Reliability Council; Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2000; Environmental, Health and Safety; and other regional jurisdiction regulations and rate case issues. With solutions from Microsoft partners, utilities have a proactive approach to compliance, the most effective way to manage operational risk across the enterprise.
Enterprise. To optimize their businesses, utility executives need real-time visibility across the enterprise. Microsoft and its partners provide integrated e-business solutions that help utilities optimize their interactions with customers, vendors and partners. These enterprise applications address business intelligence and reporting, customer relationship management, collaborative workspaces, human resources and financial management.