Standardization Of Technology Posing A Challenge

Kevin Nielsen, Sr. Director- IT Services, Salt River Project

Challenges in technology to meet enterprise utility needs in 2013 and expectations

The two challenges that are common not just for the utility industry but for the other industries is mobility and the fact that many people want more information at their finger tips wherever they are. There is a great opportunity to improve the productivity of our workers and to have better interactions with our customers if we can take advantage of all the mobile solutions that are there.

My perfect wish list for Mobility

Standardization in the whole technology is one of the biggest challenges we have as an organization. There are so many platforms, devices that is very difficult to design in an IT infrastructure that fit all of those different situations.

The other area is Business Intelligence or Big Data or Business analytics. There are more sources of information, the amount of information from each of these sources is increasing and this is coupled with more desire to understand the relationships between all the different types of information. Finding people in this area is difficult and the consulting firms are finding it difficult to keep up with the demands of the organization for people in this area.

The areas in the utility sector where solutions do not yet exist or not up to the mark, and which if existed, would've made job easier

The majority of the utility companies have built their own CRM systems and they chose not to go with a vendor package. Thus, the problem is the unavailability of a flexible CRM system for the Utility industry.

Technology trends impacting enterprise business environment

One of the trends that is difficult to figure out is the idea of Cloud. It has been popular but people haven’t given it the due diligence. We have seen a fast adoption of Cloud and then moving away from it and Cloud emerges in a new form and I think Cloud would be a trend that will have a significant impact on the industry.