This document discusses the concept of "Business Moments" and how utilities can apply this approach to improve customer experience and increase revenue. Business Moments refer to transient opportunities triggered by events involving people, businesses, and internet-connected things. The document provides examples of potential Business Moments for utilities, such as high bills, outages, or natural disasters. It argues that utilities must transform themselves to identify and act on Business Moments by collecting the right data, conducting analytics, and developing new digital products and services. Properly addressing Business Moments through personalized, timely communications can help utilities strengthen relationships with customers and gain back revenue left on the table.

1. Business Moments Applied to Utility
Abstract
We are just one step ahead of entering into digital business era, where a physical world of
things and people is talking on the internet to the digital world of business. Utility has to
improve its reputation among customers delivering real business value at Business Moments.
Therefore Utility urgently needs is to transform itself and create environment to grow new
products.
A word „digital” is getting fashionable. We usually call departments in our company –
“Digital” to include CRM and web based solutions, which are called “digital applications” too.
We hire managers to take care of digital solutions, but do we drive our businesses toward
digital business or do we simply make digitalization of our processes?
According to Gartner [1], when we are presenting content on the Web, doing e-business or
making digital marketing we are just one step ahead of entering into digital business era.
Gartner says that digital business has already started and would become a king from 2017 till
2025. Then, Smart Machines will take over to do Autonomous Business.
In the meantime, the expected percentage of revenue related to digital business sales
revenue, as declared by CIOs, will increase more than twice (from 2015 in 5 years!). In your
organization digital business buzzword is certainly vibrating too; therefore, have you already
made your plan for digital business revenue for today, in 2 years and in 5 years?
To understand what we mean by Digital Business, it is worthwhile to mention the major
players in the well-known digital areas:
• Web: people are exchanging content with people on a web page;
• E-Business: people or businesses are buying products from business on a web page;
• Digital Marketing: businesses are marketing products to people or businesses on a
web page;
As Digital Business we actually mean: a physical world of things and people talking to the
digital world of business on the internet.
More and more things are connected to the internet. Take a look at yourself – how many
things connected to the internet do you have? Usually, there are a TV set, computer(s),
tuner, mobile phone(s) and watch, play station, so at least five appliances per a single
person. Perhaps we do like gadgets too much.
Gartner says that we will have 7.3 billion of personal devices and 30 billion internet-
connected things by 2020. And things would tend to outnumber people by at least 5 to 1.
A value stream process is crafted slowly by now - even agile approach does not change the
time scale of implementation from months to days. It involves people, partner businesses
and interfaced systems. It has well defined architecture, well defined input and output.

2. Moreover, one more unknown is added to our equation of Digital Business – i.e. things.
Thus, when composing a new value stream one has to direct three orchestras: people,
businesses and things.
Considering orchestra of things, we are faced with transient opportunity, which has to be
addressed dynamically.
I have spotted transient situation in business for the first time when I was dealing with
Energy Management Systems for power plants. This time it was extremely important to
manage power plant unit when it was entering or leaving power supply system. Since at this
moment everything could have happened, the winner was everybody who properly
predicted the right path for the unit behaviour. Some people did and we were lucky to avoid
major blackouts.
Gartner introduced so called Business Moments, talking about transient opportunity or
necessity. Let’s imagine an older man falling down accidently in his apartment when he is
alone. Digital camera or digital sensors-stuffed carpet together with a wearable electronic
sensor device monitor the situation; then, probably communicate to each other and confirm
the findings. In the next immediate step, the top device will draw conclusion and classify the
situation as an accident, and then act by calling the emergency services and sending them
the vital parameters of the person in the time span of seconds.
What kinds of Business Moments could we envision in Utility Industry?
• Customer Moment of Truth (for instance, a high bill coming, rate change, product
advice, canceled power delivery, a damaged/new counter)
• Pop-Up Events (residual current device on, outage)
• Natural Disasters (flood, wind).
Using Business Moments approach we have a ready-made business case for delivering
world-class customer experience. Message sent that way, that is perfectly personally
targeted — the right thing for the right consumer, sent through the right channel at just the
right time could strengthen the Utility’s bottom line too.
The key finding of Opower’s research in 2014 was that the unengaged Business Moments led
retailers to leave 40 euro of revenue per customer per year on the table [2]. The properly
announced Business Moments to customers; however, according to Accenture [3] we have
only nine minutes per year per customer to perform it efficiently, could help to get those
moneys back.
Although that is an incredibly small window of opportunity, the key to breaking through is to
send communications to customer, wave after wave, Business Moment after Business
Moment and hope that something sticks. Some companies have been doing it already.
What kinds of Business Moments could you envision for your Industry?
We already have some examples of Business Moments applied in various industries:

3. • Virgin Atlantic has started its trial of iBeacon technology in the Upper Class Wing at
London Heathrow Airport, which would allow premium passengers to receive
personalised notifications and offers via their iPhone.
• Wi-Fi sensors bring about queue measurement and resource allocation benefits at
Airports. The data comes from sensors that monitor passengers’ mobile devices.
To make an analyses of a Business Moment we have to find out what and how:
• people are enabled or impacted in a role of consumer or employee?
• businesses are involved and enabled by technology?
• things are involved and interact to each other?
Moreover, we have to judge whether the existing business model is good enough to tackle
the Business Moment, or shall we consider to build a new business model to cover it? Do we
have well defined products or services in our portfolio to fulfil the Business Moment
requirements or new ones are to be designed and build?
How do we orchestrate a Business Moment? Let’s consider an example.
Figure 1. Utility that helps customer save energy and money to get lift in customer sentiment
The Business Moments like presented in Figure 1 are really worth spending several minutes
by customer out of those nine. Smart technology and some data analytics allow Utility
Company to deliver real business value and improve its reputation among high-value
customer, receptive to a broader set of services. Of course, depending on the maturity of
technology in the company, some actions done by Things could be done by People, for a
time being, but the concept is preserved.

4. How to transform a company to be able to collect the right data, make proper analytics
exercise, be courageous enough to jump into pool of innovations, agile to swim in, avoid
rocks of a..-covers, choose the right technology, secure architecture and, last but not least,
have funding for risky, unexpected business?
• Some companies organize innovations teams, collect their ideas and push some of
them forward. Old fashioned a bit. I have never seen its fully working.
• Companies could even send its “Magnificent Seven” to Silicon Valley to search for
new business models, prospective start-ups to invest in, and look for seeds to grow
the revolutionary new products. A step in the right direction but still not brave
enough to find a change owner and a fuel organization’s reinvention.
• We suggest to use these two models in parallel –
o transform your company to be ready to speed up, to have a digital acumen
and internalized needs to be agile in grasping digital technologies and being
able to, in a sense of smart sourced environment (business and IT);
o from the other side build start-ups send box, incubate them, pour the right
energizing funding, accelerate some, allow them to find the right technology
partnerships and finally, find a business link to mother/partner company.
According to Gartner, the plan to change your company into a digital business enabled
company should take 24 months. For start-up part of the latter model, the well-defined
methodologies have already been available and many promising experiences of the market
leading companies have been described.
Therefore, let’s go for it!
References:
[1] Business Moments: The New Speed of Business; Kimberly Harris-Ferrante, Neville
Cannon, Hung LeHong
[2] The old utility business model is coming to an end. Here’s how Europe can build a new
one. Casey Davis-Van Atta 11.3.2014
[3] Re-energizing the New Energy Consumer. Three ways utilities can ignite customer
relationships in the digital age; accenturestrategy, 2015