Eric Slavinsky
With Digital technologies, Utilities can transform customer engagement, offer new products and services as well as improve operations. How well has the Utility industry adapted to what Digitalization offers? What is the current state of Digital Transformation for Utilities?
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Sanjog Aul [00:00:00]:
Hello and welcome to this segment on CTN that is CIO Talk Network. To learn more, please visit ciotalknetwork.com. As always, we invite you to discussion on Twitter and look for the show as #digital and #utilities. Today’s topic is The State of Digital Transformation for Utilities, and we have Eric Slavinsky who’s a Chief Information Officer with PPL Corporation. Hello Eric, how are you?
Eric Slavinsky [00:00:23]:
Wonderful, how are you today? Thanks for having me on the show.
Sanjog Aul [00:00:26]:
Oh, the honor is all ours. Are doing well and let’s get started. So we are talking about utilities, which is like I would say a foundational industry for us, the way we live our life and do business. So when we talk about digital technologies, we know utilities have been there forever and they have been trying to of course increase the operations, and when it came to digital, we are definitely looking at that as an opportunity to improve the customer engagement, perhaps come up with some new products and services and also improve operations. So if we are to look at other industries versus utilities, we’ll not do a compare and contrast per se, but let’s look at utility industry typically which was always used to planning five to 10 years out. Do you think, is that still happening or if it is, in terms of, in this fast moving digital world, is that truly sustainable?
Eric Slavinsky [00:01:19]:
Well, we still create a five year business plan and we think that’s still relevant, but yet we have, we have several different strategies that we use. As we know the technology industry is changing every 12 to 18 months. So we put a long range big-picture plan together and then we every year we continue to revise that business plan and then on top of that we have an integrated meeting monthly with our business partners and we incorporate and look at all the new emerging technology that’s out there and we make adjustments to the roadmap on the fly. So in other words, if a project comes up that adds more business relevance or provides a better customer experience, we’re flexible enough now to move projects in and move and that may move moving them out and down lower to priority for the year or moving that to a separate year. So we are looking to become much more agile and we’re doing a really good job here at PPL and we can definitely share some of those new technologies that, that are really leading to a better customer experience, top level of reliability on our grid.
Sanjog Aul [00:02:40]:
So definitely from a planning standpoint, it’s a good news that your organization, I’m assuming you’re representing the utility industry in general, because I’m thinking that there Is a lot of value out there for them to start shaking out any of the, I would say the slack, if at all, that it existed and move faster. Given that the customer wants to move faster, they want more value generated. So now coming to the challenges that we have always seen the utility industry facing, they’ve not changed. If you think about it, perhaps they have even compounded because now customer wants more. They are saying, okay, yes, you were giving us utility and power or any other form of offering, but we want it better, sooner, faster, more interaction, and then you got competitive pressures because there are many other ways someone can consume or become a customer to a utility. So how is that besides obvious ones that I shared just now? Are there any other? So let’s inventory the challenges.
Sanjog Aul [00:03:42]:
What are the top challenges besides the one I shared?
Eric Slavinsky [00:03:45]:
Well, I think the one challenge is, and this really, this a customer demand is customers want to work on their schedule. They don’t want to work on our schedule. They had their busy family lives. They’re juggling children and multiple jobs and, taking care of homes, and by the way, other industries have adapted to that, right, by providing different sets of tools, mobile tools, working on the web, mail, chat, and we’ve done that, and I will tell you that we have a very good, fast, rapid development program for our mobile technologies, and so we’re spending a lot of time on mobile.
Eric Slavinsky [00:04:28]:
We’re seeing a paradigm shift, from the energy industry because our customers are demanding that we change, and it’s really a generational piece. We’re putting new technologies that put our customer in the driver’s seat, from outage alerts to some customized outage alert. So you can, you can get those customized and when you want to receive them and when you don’t want to receive them, personalized energy tools, as we all know, energy costs are going up and people want to be able to manage their own costs. So providing them those kinds of tools as an example, puts our customers in the driver’s seat and we’re letting them do business with us the way they want to do it, and I think those are really the important and the changes that we’re seeing from, from a technology perspective. As a matter of fact, most millennials don’t want to pick up a telephone and deal with us, but there are some of our, there are some of our baby boomers that don’t want to use any of the technology.
Eric Slavinsky [00:05:25]:
So we have to plan and be available for, for every different type of customer that we have now.
Sanjog Aul [00:05:32]:
So if you were to look at the 8020 rule that people always say 20% of the efforts, lead to 80% of the outcome, would you say that when we talk about digital in utilities as a context, would you say you would be investing into those so called 20% for you to get 80% or you have to first shake out and fundamentally rethink your organization before you get to that point where you’re in a very focused manner making a few investments and they give you quantum leap in terms of the value you create.
Eric Slavinsky [00:06:07]:
A great question. I would say that the first thing we try to do is pilot some of these technologies and put some smaller investments to see what results, we would get, and as a company we’ve also become very reliant on analytics to get us true data to make sure as we invest we’re truly getting a return not only for us, but for our, our rate paying customers. So we started off small and we started working on some of our existing systems and then we were starting to see really that our customer base was so accepting. You know, to be able to pay a bill from your smartphone, to be able to an estimated time of restoral from a text message and it didn’t interrupt their lives, and what we were getting were happier customers, and the two things that we want are reliability and a great customer experience. So I would say right now, we’re doubling down on technology and that’s not only the technology that touches our customers from a, from contact experience with our company, but it’s also the technologies that are, that we’re putting out there to increase our reliability.
Eric Slavinsky [00:07:25]:
So we either avoid outages when we do have an outage at the minimal outage and there are several examples of, of how that help increase our reliability. We have one of the highest reliability numbers in the country. So and we can definitely talk about some of those areas other than the customer, direct customer experience. As I said, we’re contacting our custom contacting company. You know, we’d like it if, we’d like it if our customers were happy and didn’t have to make a phone call because they had an outage. . It’d be, it’d be great just to every time flip on the lights and, and we’re working harder every day to become more and more reliable for our customers.
Sanjog Aul [00:08:06]:
When you talk about reliability, of course, we definitely are going to use the digital transformation because it’s going to allow us to in A way communicate better or differently or more with our customers, but reliability has many other legs or tentacles, if you will, which go very deep within the organization. So you have to fundamentally rethink that DNA for you to say, okay, I’m going to become reliable and I’ll communicate more with you, but I have to have my own ship in order before I go and claim that. So are you doing these in two parallel tasks or you’re saying I’m going to first, first get it all sorted out internally before we go out to the customer and claim anything.
Eric Slavinsky [00:08:44]:
Been working on getting on a ship in order. I think we’ve seen this coming down the road. You know, first of all, Pennsylvania is a competitive state to begin with, with our customers having been able to select their own generation partner. So we, we’ve seen this for several years. So we’ve been getting our ship in order, and if you look at the investments that we’ve made in our grid, to provide additional reliability, we’re in the process. We’re one of the only utilities in the country that have 100% a day of grid protected by relays and reclosers, and we have automation in place that if we have an outage, we don’t have to make a manual change to change a circuit.
Eric Slavinsky [00:09:29]:
It is all automated and developed where if an outage occurs, there’s an algorithm that we’ve thought through with our business partners and that’ll automatically change and that change in a lot of cases eliminate an outage for a customer at all. They don’t even see it. So we’re changing the way we look at our energy grid and driving investment in the technology there’s that allows us to deliver it more efficiently and reliable. We don’t have to dispatch trucks to go fix things. We can do that through the use of digital transformation, as you mentioned. Or if you look at, if you have the state of Pennsylvania and go look at the, look at the PUC reporting, we have the highest availability of any utility in the state. You know, we’re seeing these efforts pay off already. We’ve reduced outages by an average of 30%.
Eric Slavinsky [00:10:21]:
And that’s what our customers want. They want reliable, safe, reliable power. We have a new meter technology that we’re rolling out right now. We just started rolling out the new meters, as a matter of fact, this month we’ll be rolling them out, and digital transformation is really in the core of the investments that we make. Yes, we’re going to still put steel in the ground. We still need to build transmission lines and substations. That’s the, I call that table stakes.
Eric Slavinsky [00:10:50]:
. That’s what we need to do to just provide power. The additional investments in technology reason we provide cost effective and reliable technology.
Sanjog Aul [00:11:04]:
Now all the things that you did mention that you saw it a couple of years ago and started investing in it and I’m sure this bearing fruits now. Are you supposed to become that Star Trek futuristic organization for you to really make a claim, claim that you are the most progressive and the customers start trusting you or you would rather have those basic, not basic, I’d say most critical changes done, harness the most benefit from it and then not, instead of keep adding more and more investment in that area, start looking at fundamental other foundational elements. Because today you have one set of digital transformation related technologies proposed, tomorrow you could have another. So you could be chasing a ghost versus going at us at a pace which is not just looking at next shiny object and running after it. How, how are you, how are you handling all of this?
Eric Slavinsky [00:11:58]:
Investment strategy is extremely important because it’s like any investment you make, there’s a diminishing return on how much you invest. We, we need to, to continue invest to make sure we provide that reliable power and we exceed our customers expectations. You know, but on the other hand we need to be looking at other opportunities is we all know about the green energy that’s out there and that green energy is coming into our grid. You know, how do we help people man and , manage solar farm, do we? It’s not going to be managed on the transmission grid if you go to something like community solar. So how is an electric utility, how do we help manage, how do we help managing managers selling into our grid so people that have excess energy that might have a solar fall and we can sell it and we can actually dispatch it like a PJM dispatches it on the transmission side with transmission and generation. How do we dispatch green energy more at the distribution level back into the grid so we can provide that type of additional energy that our customers want as well. They’re looking for more green energy and we want to be part of that solution as well.
Eric Slavinsky [00:13:15]:
So yes, we’ve already started looking at how do we do that work and help certain people actually get their energy back on our distribution grid and help them sell power and help us meet our customers needs.
Sanjog Aul [00:13:32]:
Let’s take a quick break Lister. So we’ll be right back and Eric, let’s talk about the benchmark, like of course you are investing, you’re planning for some time and your organization has been investing and so are, I’m assuming, other utilities, but then there has to be something that you look forward to achieving, like a benchmark, a holy grail, a standard. What does that mean? At least what we know of today, what’s achievable is a benchmark or utilities to accomplish as part of investing. Leveraging this digital transformation. Please stay tuned listeners.
Sanjog Aul [00:14:55]:
Welcome back. So Eric, when we talk about utilities related investments and how you plan, of course that was planned given what we see today, but this like a moving target because there’s so many different areas in which digital is morphing and at the same time the customers for utility industry, their preferences are changing and I’m sure there are certain things which are happening in the very utilities we talk about, renewable energy and others. So, so is there a specific benchmark, if you will, you are pursuing with respect to the current framework and the parameters, or would you be forced to remain fluid? But if you do remain fluid, how would you ever manage anything to completion?
Eric Slavinsky [00:15:35]:
Well, I mean, you bring up a very good point. I mean in years of investment in the energy industry, the utility industry has always been the traditional. We have a generation plant, we have a transmission system, we have a distribution system and then we send energy out to homes and businesses. With the new generation of community solar, even rooftop solar, wind generation, we’re trying to figure out ways to help our customers, be able to not only take advantage of the green energy for themselves, but how can we help our other customers take advantage of green energy? Should they want that? Because there are customers that are willing to pay more for green energy. So what we’ve been trying to work on and it, and it this, this new to the industry because the original grid was built for one way. You send it from the generation station out to your custom. So one of our goals is to help our customers get their energy back coming the other way and get it on our grid, and we’d be able to dispatch that.
Eric Slavinsky [00:16:48]:
So we would be able to, we’d be able to track how much energy they’re selling. They’d be able to get directly paid for that and that whether that’s a consumer selling from a rooftop panel or a community that has a solar, solar field, in their subdivision, and we think that by building the relationships between us and our customers who now really receive our services and ensure that now we can receive their services and dispatch their power, we’ll make it a better, community for all of us to work in. Now, I would tell you, not easy, and it’s something we think, though, that we need to work very hard because again, if anything about net metering or what our customers are asking for, they’re saying, hey, if we’re, producing more energy than we need, we like to make sure that you can buy it from that and sell it somewhere else to one of your other customers. So it’s the challenge, but that I think again, as we continue to, as we continue to transform ourselves from utilities into energy companies, there’s a lot of different solutions that we need to continue to look at and see where we can make an smart investment and ensure that we’re solving problems of the future.
Sanjog Aul [00:18:13]:
So it’s not too long ago when we used to look at utilities already having issues with respect to aging infrastructure, workforce, and I would say, more importantly, the thinning margins.
Eric Slavinsky [00:18:25]:
.
Sanjog Aul [00:18:25]:
And that was already happening, and plus on top of it, now you got competition and then you got people asking for renewable energy. Totally a new area for utilities which otherwise was not being considered like say a decade ago. So where is this money coming from? I would call it play money or I would say investment money. Because it has been seen that if there is already a lower margin and if I am going to invest, say on a mobile device or mobile application or other form of communication, not sure if customer is ready to pay more.
Eric Slavinsky [00:18:58]:
You’re right. Typically not ready to pay more is, is we need to manage our existing budgets and become and become better stewards of spending our money and take money and move it from existing investments to new investments and just, just say we’re going to add X amount of million dollars next year. So it’s our job to make sure that we, as I said, we want to provide reliable and affordable, energy. The affordable piece means that we need to really continue to manage our costs and manage our budgets and we need to do a better job at that, and then we are working that we have goals, internal goals in the company to continue to reduce, to continue to reduce our costs and invest in those areas that you spoke about so we can continue to be competitive, and competitive doesn’t mean just going out there and spending more money. It’s, it’s redistributing and really prioritizing where you spend your money.
Sanjog Aul [00:19:58]:
So the people who are supposed to open up their checkbooks, what’s your appeal to them, if you will, which was, which is something which you’ve not tried earlier, which is offering them, I would say, a legit business case for them to open up the purse strings and give you the money to get started. Because otherwise it’s going to keep remaining a catch 22.
Eric Slavinsky [00:20:18]:
Well, but I would say, right. I don’t think we’re looking for our customers to necessarily just open up their checkbooks. In Pennsylvania, we haven’t, we don’t haven’t been in for a rate case asking for any new money. It really does come back to us reprioritizing our existing budgets and then customers like the new services and products and services that we’re producing and providing to them. We’ll get feedback from our customers. I mean we do focus group. We spend a lot of time with our customers, not just during rate times, but during times when we, when we are all working with them. So what about asking them for money really then seeing the view we’re going to ongoing that we’re going to continue to.
Sanjog Aul [00:21:18]:
And what about the stakeholders, the ones internally in the company, your boss, someone who has to eventually shell out the initial set of dollars in order for you to even invest in these, foundational building tasks. Because that has been a pain all along. How to get enough money from the business to change and just to stay relevant. It’s less about profitability anymore. It’s just about being in existence and be relevant. Yeah.
Eric Slavinsky [00:21:43]:
You know, I look at technology as being part of the business now. I mean we have to run together. It’s not a separate technology and business piece because all business can’t run without technology. So we’re part of the, I look at ourselves, we’re part of the operation. So when we talk about spending money, so we have a technology budget and that technology budget covers the entire business. So it’s up to our businesses to . It’s not an, an unlimited amount of money. It’s up to our businesses to come through process that I was telling you earlier.
Eric Slavinsky [00:22:17]:
Not only our annual planning process, but our monthly planning process and come with their business cases and ROIs and a group, not a group of technology people, but a group of technology and business people sit around in these meetings and challenge those business cases to make sure that if we’re going to spend any money, we’re spending it in the right areas. Because everyone you sue out of money, it’s not like we just don’t have a budget. You know, we look to the best places to spend our money, and it’s done really in cooperation together. This, this whole thing of an IT group and a business group, those things have just blended together, and we use more time with our businesses than we ever have. I mean, matter of fact, that’s one of my main jobs, spending time with the business leadership in the company to understand where they want to take the company, what do the customers require, what are the technologies that are out there, and then we work together to come up with technology solutions to meet those needs and make sure we’re working within our budgets.
Sanjog Aul [00:23:29]:
And it’s a tough job. I can totally see that. Now, coming to the investments, whether in technology or other areas, what are the top candidates that you would say are the first ones to tackle? Suppose you are representing the utility industries around the world and say if we had to go and get the most value from the digital transformation, these are the specific business functions and core competencies I would tackle. first. Invest in first to make sure that you got a good foundation going and then go after the nice ones, which are those core then.
Eric Slavinsky [00:24:01]:
Yeah, first one is analytics. We have a tremendous amount of data. We have a tremendous amount of data on all the equipment that we’ve had out in the fields, and we have preventative maintenance plans and upgrade plans and things of that nature, and the thing that we’re working on right now is retrieving data on all of those assets that we have out there, and then we can actually run queries against that data and really look for actual historical data on what’s our most reliable pieces of equipment, which aren’t our most reliable pieces of equipment, and by doing that, we actually create a preventative maintenance schedule that may be different than what the manufacturer actually recommends, because the manufacturer’s schedule is based on the testing they did when they first, delivered or engineered that product. Now we have products out there from , brand new products out to 20, 30, 40 years on the lifetime of some of our goods and services.
Eric Slavinsky [00:25:07]:
And we make decisions based on that. So analytics is key because that’s another way we can control our cost and make investments in other areas, and by the way, the reliability goes with that as well, and then, going back to the customer experience, we have a, something that we developed in IT. It’s called the 360 degree view of the customer, and what that is when a customer calls in, it is a, the desktop and it calls in, and through the use of analytics and the systems we have, we look at task customer calls, outages, billing arrangements, any type of data that may interact with that customer, and when that screen pops, it gives, tries to do a calculation and say this why the customer is calling.
Eric Slavinsky [00:26:00]:
So, so that’s another piece of technology use analytics, analytics and a lot of other tools to try and get a better customer experience and by the way, to do a better job answering the customer’s questions and let them get off the phone and go back to their, whatever activities they were doing before that. They surely no one went to spend the time on a phone with any utility, whether it be a cable company. They wanted, they, they want that as, as reliable service. So we’re using a lot of that and , we’re trying to do, trying to make their days at this, with as little disruption as possible. So the technologies that we put in place are really to avoid any pain that they may experience by dealing with companies to, as far as their daily lives go. I mean, you used to pick a customer service rep 10 clicks in several screens to get that single view that I was talking about. Now that all comes up automatically, and as, as we’re getting better with the screen pops, our analytics are smart enough to continue to keep tweaking and changing.
Eric Slavinsky [00:27:10]:
So the screen pots continue to get better and better agents, which again provides a better experience back to our customers. So I mean analytics are very important. Mobility is very important, and that customer experience interaction with our customers, whether it’s through traditional telephone technology, interactive voice response units, whatever that customer chooses to do business with us. Those are all the important areas for my technology group.
Sanjog Aul [00:27:40]:
And whichever area that you mentioned, would you say your major focus would be more to see how you can use this investment which would have a positive roi, connecting it to the growth of the organization? Or is it still going into the cost savings mode which almost all industries and special utilities has been for a long, long time.
Eric Slavinsky [00:28:02]:
I mean, some of the analytics may require, some different data scientists, some different investments on, on how we analyze our data and how we look at it. So, we want to control our boss, but we want to move. We will make the right investments to make sure we’re doing the right things for the customer, and it’s a trade off. ? We’re trying to provide service. You know, as a matter of fact, part of our mission is to provide, low cost service to our customers, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be looking at the future and shortcutting investments, but on the other hand, there’s no open checkbook to just spend money.
Eric Slavinsky [00:28:42]:
So it’s a balance act, but we’re surely, we’re surely looking to do a better job of managing our budgets, but not at the expense of our customers or continuing to move forward with our technology.
Sanjog Aul [00:28:57]:
Let’s take a quick break listeners. We’ll be right back, and let’s talk about the customer. Since we are talking and everything has a customer centricity to it, what are the current customer expectations? And we did touch on it briefly, but then let’s put all of those bullet points, if you will, at one place to say what does a customer want today and in case we have to be prepared for tomorrow, how are those customer expectations morphing so that as we go about investing today, we are not doing it just for today, it is also taking care of tomorrow. We stay tuned listeners. We’ll be right back.
Sanjog Aul [00:30:19]:
Welcome back. So Eric, when we know that the customer expectations are of a certain type, we start working towards it, but the reality today is we are in a fast moving world where the customer expectations change as well. So when you are sitting in the ivory tower or talking to your people in the field, are you working with the customer expectation which you get to know As a snapshot or the ones which were a couple of days, I would say a year or two earlier, but you’re just trying to catch up or is there an active effort to really know what the customer would want? Which I know it’s almost like looking for a crystal ball, but a customer would want say in a couple of years down. So you are always ahead or at least at par with where the customer wants to be.
Eric Slavinsky [00:31:05]:
One thing is, we have a, we have commitment to serve and one of the things that we need to do when we serve is we need to look for low cost solutions for our customers, managing costs, but the one thing we do is we have customer commitment groups and we have third parties go out and talk to our customers and we do, we use a third party because we don’t want somebody out there from our industry. We want somebody out there that can ask the right kinds of questions and continue to get, get the right answers out there, and depending on, and depending on who the, and group of customers are, people look, you’ll, you’ll hear business, you’ll hear anthems like Excuse me, I don’t want my electricity rates to go up. Then you’ll hear people say I want to, I want to be involved more in green energy, and so you, you have a, you have a big diversity, you have a segment of customers that are very diverse, based on several things, based on generational, the big, and I think the biggest one is generational, the millennials versus the baby boomers, that part really trying to be proactive, and those meetings with our customers are the things that give us ideas to continue to push forward. You know, I know people come home and put their light switch on or , they’re driving and they see transmission lines.
Eric Slavinsky [00:32:32]:
But we’re not the staunchy utility industry of the past. You know, with the use of all the technology we have, we’re becoming the next generation, we’re becoming next generation energy companies. You know, our customers are not one size fits all. You know, we have one to prefer a one on one human interaction and we want, then we have the other ones that want to, self service convenience at 2 o’ clock in the morning, so we have to be prepared to satisfy customers at all ends of the spectrum and everywhere in between. You know, our efforts are paying off. PPL just earned its 41st J.D. power award. PPL electric, utility, renewable gas, Kentucky utilities all receives top rankings for customer service.
Eric Slavinsky [00:33:21]:
So customer service is something that’s bred in our company. Where can people and to be proactive, to go out and try and stay ahead of our customers and understand what their want and needs are.
Sanjog Aul [00:33:38]:
Let’s talk people for a second. So we know utility industry always had thissue with aging infrastructure. So do we change the people or we change the infrastructure?
Eric Slavinsky [00:33:48]:
Well, interesting. We’re going to continue to update and change our infrastructure. Yeah, there’s no doubt we have a have an aging workforce. We also have a great young, energetic and millennial workforce coming in, and it’s interesting how the two workforces actually work together. Millennials, as , they like working in a group and get everybody engaged and have a big conversation about it. Where a lot of the baby boomers are like, I have a job, I need to get it done, I’m going to go do it, and , working with cross functional teams and putting boomers and millennials together, that’s really been quite surprising because you have boomers that actually with all their knowledge, all their tribal knowledge in particular, want to be able to invade that to the younger folks that are coming in the organization.
Eric Slavinsky [00:34:50]:
And by doing that, we’re actually getting a knowledge transfer and both groups are figuring out how to work together, which is also pretty amazing, and we have a pretty heavy tech savvy workforce. Implementing the predictive analytics solution that we put in place has been a pretty amazing feat. Now I will tell you that is never going to be over. We’re going to continue to make that better, but , infrastructure, where the data tells us where we need to invest in our systems to make them stronger, make it more reliable, it can tell us what poles, the RD rating, sas, does they need to be replaced or , do I do, when do I go out and TM a transformer. These are things that were always just on a schedule based on manufacturer suggestions. Now we’re using real live, we’re using real live data on the equipment that’s installed out there, supporting our customers to provide, to provide better data to our field.
Eric Slavinsky [00:35:55]:
And by the way, the funny thing about it is while it was an investment in data analytics, the overall cost goes down because you’re sending less trucks out, you’re spending less money on preventative maintenance. So there’s actually an offset. So that’s what I talked about earlier where we mentioned, do you, do you cut here to do there? No, we look for technology projects that bring an ROI to the business so we can help fund a lot of
Sanjog Aul [00:36:23]:
our projects and when you look at the infrastructure and we are going to make some changes, I’m assuming many of them would be fundamental changes. So the very travel knowledge that you were talking about, would that become redundant? How are you, how are you planning to create a mix? Because of course if you’re trying to go digital then many, many older systems may have to be replaced, and yes, there will be a phased approach. However, we know the writing on the wall and the people who were there, they would have issues with, okay, this what I did for last 30 years and yes, I’m ready to do even today. How are you justifying at what pace do you change the people or not change, maybe retool, repurpose people, also the infrastructure all along while keeping the cost. Remember we spoke about cost control and at the same time becoming relevant to digital. So this like a multidimensional problem. I’m sure you’re getting paid the big bucks for handling it, but how are you approaching this, the people, because that’s the softer side, which doesn’t have two plus two equal to four.
Eric Slavinsky [00:37:36]:
You know, we manage through those changes. We plans, we do retrain people, we do, put in a new customer care system and sure we had people at the company that were not used to it, but what, we retrain those people. You know, we invest in folks, we invest in our systems and , we think we have a pretty good plan around that now. Nothing’s ever perfect, but I think we do a great job of planning for our people and ensuring that as we make investment and work, rules change, systems change and different interfaces change. That’s part of our large plans to make sure we can bring our people along through the proper training and ensure that they can serve the, end up serving their customer.
Sanjog Aul [00:38:27]:
So now let’s talk about specific competencies and roles that you feel should be put in place in order for utility industries, the organizations within the industry to be able to move ahead with confidence what competencies that you think now more than ever are relevant and critical.
Eric Slavinsky [00:38:48]:
The real main skill or competence competency that people need is they need to come in with an analytical mind. They need to be able to think about things and not just take the answer, the first answer that comes and really be able to put some of the technical pieces together, put some of the field data pieces together, understand that customers backgrounds and analyzing is so important. You know, 20 years ago, 10 years ago, if you want to know what a data analyst was, it’d be very different than what a data analyst is today, and I think that’s really important piece. I’m going to give you a very simple skill that I think people need to bring to business today to work called curiosity. I think that when people are curious whether they’re a millennial, a baby boomer, wherever they may be in their career, if they’re curious, they’re going to succeed working at tpl because, we like curious people. I think that’s one of the most important parts of your job. You do a job, you go, well, I’m curious.
Eric Slavinsky [00:40:11]:
You know, I want to take the next step. I want to look at a broader view. So, there are some, there are some broad skills that people bring in from their college degrees. Obviously, we have a tremendous amount of engineers in the company. We have a lot of IT people with technical degree, but we have a lot of people that aren’t from the utility industry, and they bring curiosity, they bring the willingness to learn. They’re going to fit fine and fine in the industry. They really will.
Sanjog Aul [00:40:43]:
Let’s take a quick break, listeners. We’ll be right back after these messages, and let’s look at the very ecosystem in which we operate. The utilities operate. Earlier it was utility industry with some suppliers. Now we need to join hands perhaps with other utilities, some other renewable energy providers and everyone in between, and in order for us to make this work, that means interoperability is going to be a big challenge. Also, it could be considered as an opportunity.
Sanjog Aul [00:41:13]:
So is the utility industry supporting cooperation, collaboration to jointly tackle these challenges and not having to reinvent the wheel and not, basically instead of learning from somebody else’s mistakes, making the same mistakes over and over? What does that mindset do you think is prevailing among an individual and a group of utility organizations for them to move forward together? Please sit your list. Wristel right now.
Sanjog Aul [00:42:36]:
Welcome back. So Eric, we know there’s a saying that when someone wants to go fast, they could go alone, but if they want to go far, they have to take people along. So to that end utility industry players, are they really trying to go fast or want to go far? And in that, towards that end, to that end are they really collaborating? And even though there’s competition in some case, are they believing and working together?
Eric Slavinsky [00:43:03]:
But what I’ve observed is even the competition that’s out there, this a really unique industry about working together, and we all think of, mutual assistance as a storm. We send crews down and we help restore people’s, people’s power to get them up as quickly as possible, but , we a couple of the industry routes, one of them being EPRI which is the Electric Power Research Institute and EEI which is the Edison Electric Institute, and many, many investor owned utilities participate in both of these organizations, and a couple of things that the point out is like in EPRI they do a lot of, not only they do a lot of real research so , they’ll have different verticals to generation and transmission distribution, but they also have a CIO, CIO vertical and then they have a cyber vertical, and we have teleconferences and we have meetings where we get our groups together and really dig into these areas of interest for all our utilities. We work really closely there.
Eric Slavinsky [00:44:17]:
And with Edison Electric Institute about a year ago we kicked off program that we call cybersecurity mutual assistance. So it’s a takeoff on our original mutual assistance program that the utilities have been doing for 30 plus years by what we’ve done is what a small group of investor owned utilities and some of the co ops actually as well. You know, we’ve created playbooks, we’ve created, we’ve done tabletop exercises on how we would share resources, knowledge during potential cyber attack on one of our sister utilities, and that’s something that we’re continuing to hone our skills on, but , the amount of cooperation that takes place between our companies is just amazing.
Sanjog Aul [00:45:09]:
And if you were to see a common thread when it comes to digital transformation, would you see these different players in the industry thinking alike or would you say there are some tangential or conflicting views or strategies which might undermine what we are saying is that is to create collective intelligence or become a cohesive force.
Eric Slavinsky [00:45:29]:
Course I think the real big key is thinking alike. We see many, many of the same challenges and opportunities. You know so those EPRI verticals that I spoke about, those were verticals that were developed by groups inside many different utilities to say this where we like to focus our efforts, and like I said, EPRI does a lot of research and they do a lot of pilots on technologies. Again, instead of one utility going it alone and spending a lot of money on something that might not be end up being a good product. The ability to have EPRI in there and as part of our dues, create pilots, puts us in a position of reducing risk and also working to, working with each other to make sure we get the best product or service out of those types of endeavors. See people working really well together and this mutual assistance is something that people are really working very closely with.
Sanjog Aul [00:46:31]:
2020, if that was the year and you had to define how utility industry players are delivering value and thriving as a profitable enterprise, what would that look like? What would they be?
Eric Slavinsky [00:46:45]:
So I think you see much, I think you’re going to see utilities that are, you’re going to see different, different generation solutions that, that are there, right? You’re going to see there’s still very similar baseload that we need to, run our country, but you’re going to see many, many other generation opportunities out there. Like I mentioned earlier with solar, wind, a lot of that, that as the prices get cheaper, you’re going to see more and more of that. I think you’ll see, you’ll see more and more sharing across the grid. Obviously there’s a lot of investment being made in the grid right now by many companies and many third party transmission companies that are looking to really nationalize the grid to get, to get that west coast solar and wind back to the east coast and I for maturity in those areas. now, people are trying to figure all that investment out, but the costs continue to drop down and again our customers want different energy types. I don’t see our natural, natural gas and , and coal totally going away. I think we need, we need energy diversity. We’ve all talked about that as a country.
Eric Slavinsky [00:48:01]:
So to me we need, we need several different sources from, for many reasons, but I think you’ll see, I think the energy companies continue to become technology companies. We’re going to surprise, companies that have been around for 150 years and things like that. I think we’re going to surprise a lot of people going forward.
Sanjog Aul [00:48:23]:
Last step leadership and culture if we are to get where we, and that’s why I asked you this question. Where we will be. What do you think has to be the shift in the mindset of the leaders and the workforce that we have so that collectively they build a culture in order for us to realize that 2020 dream you just laid out?
Eric Slavinsky [00:48:43]:
Well, so , I mean our goals and tenants are rooted in customer satisfaction, right? Delivery, safe, reliable, affordable power. You know, we’re adapting to those. Where did that change? We have a develop, we definitely have a diverse, talented workforce, cooperation and partnering. You know, changing our leadership styles from the old top down leadership is going to be critical for us to be successful. You know, I should never be one step away from anybody in my organization. My organization should be. Anyone in my organization should be able to walk in my office and they know they can. We have the ability, we have to get the ability through, the red tape and be able to work more cooperatively.
Eric Slavinsky [00:49:36]:
You know, listening to our customers and developing solutions is going to be really critical. As I said that the health and workforce is going to be critical, but our ability and we are changing our leaders leadership styles is the most critical aspect of allowing ourselves to get there. We have to be in a position where we can make quicker decisions, not decisions by consensus and continue to move quickly in a very rapid changing area of technology and generation.
Sanjog Aul [00:50:09]:
On behalf of the show and our listeners, I’d really like to thank you Eric, for sharing your thoughts on what’s the current state of digital transformation for utilities and what can we see the surprises and pleasant surprises where utilities will really become a value added partner to its customers and to the ecosystem that we belong in. Thank you so much again, Eric and
Eric Slavinsky [00:50:31]:
I’d like to thank you again for inviting me and have a great day.
Sanjog Aul [00:50:37]:
Thank you again. Please like us on Facebook listeners, search for CTN, that’s CIO Talk Network and be sure to follow us on Twitter. Thank you again for listening to this segment on CTN. This Sanjog Aul, your talk show host till next week. Take care and God bless.
