Electricity is something many people don’t think about until the power goes out. And yet it is the lifeblood of our economies, powering factories, buildings—and, increasingly, our modes of transportation. As we have seen in the wake of Harvey, the consequences of power outages can be dire.
Keeping the power on is just one of a myriad of imperatives confronting power and utility companies. Business leaders must also maximize power production, availability, and reliability; maintain assets safely; continuously improve productivity; and control operating expenses. And they must do so while managing the multiple challenges of aging infrastructure, siloed data sources, paper-based systems, and generational workforce turnover.
On top of all of this, power and utility business models are being disrupted by the rise of distributed and renewable power and the spread of intelligent grids. Simply put, legacy IT systems originally designed for centralized power, a stationary workforce, and a one-way grid are ill-suited to the 21st century power system that will be increasingly characterized by more distributed assets, more distributed workers (with greater mobility needs), and more dynamic grids. That is where modern field service management software comes in.
For the last 12 years, I have had the opportunity to be part of GE’s Renewable Energy remarkable growth story, which is part of the broader narrative of renewable energy becoming mainstream—and now the largest source of new power generation. I joined ServiceMax because I firmly believe that a digital disruption of the power and utilities world—what we at GE call the “Electricity Value Network” or EVN—is underway, and that field services represents the vanguard of this disruption.
How is field service management starting to disrupt the EVN? Who are the early adopters, and what results are they seeing? How can I digitally transform my services business so I stay ahead of the curve? I invite you to join me, ServiceMax customers and partners, GE experts, and industry thought leaders for an afternoon exploring these and other questions at Maximize in Las Vegas on Monday, September 18.
I hope you’ll attend and explore the why and how of digitally disrupting your power & utility service business before being disrupted. As Gene Kranz of Apollo 13 fame (and one of our Maximize keynotes) put it, “Failure is not an option.”
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