Forward-looking utilities are beginning to examine new business models by considering new products and services to customers or systems operators.

Don’t forget to take a look at how new offerings will impact your assets. For example, your company may decide to offer solar plus storage or electric vehicle charging to customers. That will necessitate asset investment and change the way that assets are operated and maintained. Even if your utility is not considering new business models, an asset strategy is worth revisiting. A collaborative effort between operations, maintenance and IT is the best approach.

Once you’ve settled on the objectives and have an understanding of priorities, find out what information the organization needs to support decision-making. Start understanding how the organization utilizes information to gain insight about assets. You will not be alone in discovering that your organization is missing out on opportunities to use data from many parts of the organization – most utilities are in that same position.

It is appropriate to look at available technology concurrently. However, technology should not drive the strategy. Evaluate your existing technology and its strengths and shortcomings. Because technology is developing at a rapid pace, look at new technology offered by vendors.  Explore how platforms deliver on asset management insights and whether these platforms can also be used to support other needs within the organization, such as customer engagement. As part of your evaluation, experiment with proof-of-concept projects that are quick to establish, low in cost, and high in transferable learning.

Pay particular attention to the quality of your existing data. Data needs to be organized to ensure that the costs of implementing new technologies do not outweigh the benefits. The scope needs to include a determination of how disparate systems, equipment, and analytics will be harmonized. For example, you will need to make sure there is a way to geo-spatially tie asset data together and time-stamp operational data in order for predictive analytics and root cause diagnostics to be effective.

Ensure that you have the right staff on board to realize the vision. Identify relevant technology and analytics skills among existing staff, peers, and vendors. Assess skill gaps and plan to hire and/or externally sourced professional services to fill those gaps, at least initially. Develop data experts with the operational knowledge and cross-functional skills to analyze vast data sources with analytics tools.

Do not overlook change management as workers learn to work with analytics. Take a look at changes in business processes that could create efficiencies as analytics are implemented.  Do not ignore other third platform technologies – mobility, cloud, and social business – to improve efficiencies, reduce costs, and enhance learning.