| | February 20178CIOReviewCreating the "Smart" UtilityBy Bill Schmarzo, CTO, Big Data Practice, Dell EMCLike many others, utilities sit on the cusp of a digital business transformation driven by superior customer, services, operational and market insights. Utilities are learning to leverage these superior insights to optimize key business processes, create new monetization opportunities, fend off cyber attacks and create a more compelling, more prescriptive customer experience. But the business transformation can't stop there. Leading Utilities must embrace an approach that leverages basic economic concepts such as the multiplier effect, scarcity and price elasticity to understand the economic value of their data and analytics. Leading Utilities need a framework that facilitates the identification, capture, refinement and sharing of the utilities' data and analytics digital assets to help drive digital business transformation.One of the first questions to ask is:How effective is your organization at leveraging data and analytics to power your business models?The Big Data Business Model Maturity Index was developed to help organizations understand where they sit today with respect to leveraging data and analytics to power their business models (see Figure 1).The Big Data Business Model Maturity Index also provides a roadmap regarding the realm of what's possible with respect to transitioning from collecting data to monitor performance and optimizations, to exploiting superior customer, service, operational and network insights to optimize key business processes, uncover new monetization or revenue opportunities, reduce security threats and to create a more compelling, more prescriptive customer experience.Transitioning From Connected to SmartThe Internet of Things (IoT) is triggering an explosion of sensors and connected devices which is generating a stream of operational, user, and performance data. Buried inside this data are customer, product, service, operational, network and market insights that provide the foundation for utilities to transition from being "connected" to being "smart."But what does it mean to become "smart"? A smart business entity optimizes the decisions in support of its business objectives. For example, predictive maintenance would include decisions about identifying at-risk components, what maintenance needs to be performed, what tools are needed to perform the maintenance, when to perform the maintenance, and who is best qualified to perform that maintenance.To become smart, a utility would seek to leverage the insights about customer usage patterns, product performance, network IN MY OPINIONFigure 1: Big Data Business Model Maturity IndexFigure 2: Smart Utility Potential Business Use Cases
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