Information Management Will Be Key to the 21st Century Utility Transformation

Around the world, external forces are changing the way utilities do business. The entire industry is undergoing a transformation.

To stay competitive and maximize their returns on investments and assets, firms aren’t simply building new generation sources. Instead they are turning their focus to creating greater operational efficiencies from improvements in customer support and service, and their compliance with new and ever-growing regulations. There’s plenty of room left to improve in those areas and there’s also the new business opportunities that come with change.

In this sort of environment it becomes imperative that utilities work to manage information in an easier and more efficient manner.  This allows them to react quickly to changing regulations in a competitive marketplace, along the way reducing costs, boosting productivity, ensuring compliance and enhancing competitive advantage.  

Yesterday in New York City, we announced the availability of Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 along with Visio 2010 and Project 2010 for business customers.  These products provide the best productivity experience across the PC, phone, and browser, and are charting the future of productivity for our company. They will be instrumental in helping Utilities accelerate their ability to manage information in and across the enterprise. I wanted to bring to your attention two new case studies in Utilities that will help demonstrate our great momentum in the marketplace. Take a look at the Constellation and TECO Energy cases studies and share them with your customers!

In terms of helping Utilities with making management of key documents easier and more efficient our partner OpenText was one of the featured Utility SharePoint 2010 launch partners. You can view the Stephen Elop launch keynote here  and a great video featuring OpenText here.

The great productivity gains we’ve seen over the past 20 years have come in large part from the harnessing of information technology to business challenges and today it’s easy to see that every company's opportunity for economic success begins with the quality of its people, their productivity and their ability to manage information effectively to make better decisions more quickly. Our announcements yesterday will continue the advance of productivity gains and are a giant step forward in helping utilities achieve their information management. - Jon C. Arnold