The utility industry is being rapidly transformed by digital technology. Utilities are awash in asset and customer data that can provide a pathway to maximize operational efficiency, improve customer delivery, and optimize financial performance. However, integrating that data across departments and between different systems remains a challenge. For utilities to truly break down silos, there is a growing understanding that an enterprise-wide approach to break down silos and emphasizing interoperability is needed.
Building a system that simultaneously works for customers, society, and energy providers requires integration. An integrated, digital utility will be customer-centric, resilient, automated, and hyper-connected. The ability to share data across systems and platforms will allow a utility to solve the most significant business challenges such as aging infrastructure, incorporating distributed energy resources into the generation mix, and providing the customer what they want when they need it seamlessly.

The steps necessary to create this enterprise-wide approach will incorporate some of the advancements that utilities made during the smart grid age, and a new focus on customer-centricity. This report will explore the steps utilities can take to fully integrate their data, systems, and processes using digital solutions. Furthermore, it will focus on the technology, people, and processes necessary to overhaul the industry and create a digital utility.

More specifically, this paper explores:

• What strategies and technologies utilities are using and plan to use to break down silos across the enterprise.
• What challenges utilities are facing in making this transition
• What people at the utility are making decisions about this transition
• What benefits the utility industry is seeing from implementing digital technologies.