More assets, more sensors, more data and more analysis are bringing asset-intensive industries into a new era of asset management: one of unprecedented connection and information.

But how do utility companies take advantage of these new opportunities? How can they best integrate their asset management efforts, as well as build stronger visibility across the enterprise? A key component of addressing these needs is to build stronger connections between IT and OT—at both the technology and organizational levels.

To better understand the progress being made in the utility industry, ABB and Zpryme reached out to 220 utility executives to learn more about their IT-OT approaches to the next generation of asset management.

Key findings include:

• Nearly every respondent said asset management was a priority, and 55% reported that the importance of asset management had increased over the past 12 months.
• Approximately 35% of respondents said IT-OT integration for asset management is valuable, and 45% revealed it to be very to extremely valuable.
• Over a quarter of respondents indicated their IT-OT technology integration is not going well at all, and another 41% noted that it was only going fairly well.
• Most respondents felt their technology and business groups work together fairly well together (38%)
• The internet of things (IoT) has the power to significantly influence utilities and their asset management operations. When we asked utilities how influential they thought IoT would be on asset management [On a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 = not influential, 5 = extremely influential] they scored IoT slightly above the mid-point as 3.4.