Annually, CGI leaders around the world meet face-to-face with business and IT executives to gather their perspectives on the trends affecting their enterprises, including business and IT priorities, IT spending and investment plans. In 2019, we conducted in-person interviews with 127 utilities client executives, who cite consumer demands, cybersecurity, optimizing operations, evolving for greater agility, and digital strategies as dominant drivers this year.
Becoming digital to meet customer expectations remains top trend, while focus on security grows
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Becoming digital to meet customer expectations remains the most impactful trend this year, as in 2018, for utilities executives. Cybersecurity rises to become the second top trend, from third last year. Optimizing investment and the operational cost of assets rises to third in impact from fourth in 2018. |
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| The top trends in the utilities industry were led by a focus on becoming digital organizations to meet customer expectations. Assuring regulatory compliance and protecting through cybersecurity were the next top trends, followed by optimizing investment and cost of assets and changing business and operating models. |
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Key findings
92% have a digital strategy in place
Utilities executives indicate considerable progress in their digital transformation journey, with 92% stating they have a defined strategy in place. Of those, 38% report their strategy is at the department level rather than the enterprise level, and just 17% indicate their enterprise strategy extends to their external ecosystem. However, of those executives that have a digital strategy in place, only 11% are producing results.
Explore how organizations are gaining value from their enterprise digital transformation strategy.
Cultural change and change management is the top challenge
The key challenges to transformation have remained the same for the last five years, with cultural change and change management persisting as the top barrier.
78% are using the cloud, in line with global averages
This year we asked utilities executives to share how they are using cloud-based solutions, and 31% are using them for their own organization, 6% for customers, and 41% for both. Additionally, they indicated how their organization’s cloud usage is divided between private, public and hybrid clouds (as shown in the above chart. Executives also were asked if they have mechanisms in place to locate where key data assets are stored in the cloud, and 29% report they do not have clarity on this question.
Benchmarking clients’ satisfaction with their own IT organization
For the second year, business and IT executives interviewed ranked their satisfaction with their own IT organizations based on the 10 key attributes of a world-class IT organization. Overall in the utilities industry, satisfaction with internal IT is low, at an average level of 6.9 out of 10. Across the 10 attributes, utilities executives’ overall satisfaction scores have increased this year, due especially to more satisfied business leaders.
CGI can provide clients with a discussion of all available benchmarking, including each client’s positioning, on topics such as digital maturity, IT budgets, IT satisfaction, innovation investments and more. Contact us to learn more.
Learn how CGI helps clients on their journey to world-class IT.
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Also see the industry summaries for our 2018 and 2017 CGI Client Global Insights.
