Smart Utility: Solution Overview
An Electric Perspective
Accenture and Oracle deliver
integrated technology, resources, and
processes to support your company’s
transformation to an informationdriven, conservation-conscious,
customer-centric smart utility.
Improving the utility
operating model is a
global challenge
Utilities are at the center of an
increasingly energy-aware world. As
governments, citizens, and customers
pay more attention to the costs,
availability and environmental impact
of electricity, utility companies face
increased scrutiny and new challenges.
Utilities today must provide a reliable
and efficient infrastructure by
upgrading aging equipment and closely
managing capital assets. Data from new
meters must be collected and analyzed.
Grid security must be maintained to
protect the infrastructure and the
energy supply. These operational
challenges are impacted by increases
in distributed generation to the grid,
such as solar- and wind-generated
electricity—and the potential
widespread adoption of electric
vehicles. Utilities must plan for multiple
energy-generation scenarios with
these game-changing technologies.
In addition, regulations and social
mandates are further impacting day-today operations. Utilities must minimize
their environmental impact while
adhering to standards and requirements.
Government agencies are increasing
oversight of electricity generation—
especially coal-fueled plants. Regulators
in many countries require action
on smart grid and smart metering
initiatives that add intelligence to
the infrastructure. All this must
be accomplished in a challenging
economic climate with strict budgetary
restraints, slimmer margins and
increased pressure for revenue.
This increased attention and the
demand for change provides
utilities with a unique opportunity
to rethink and transform their
businesses. This is what becoming
a smart utility is all about.
The promise of the
“smart utility”
The promise of the smart utility
is in its ability to enable a future
energy economy characterized by
smarter energy choices—by the
utility as well as its customers.
While the definitions for smart utility
vary from company to company, they
also have many characteristics in
common. At its foundation is the smart
meter that records and sends data on
consumption, voltage levels, outages
and alarms to the utility for monitoring
and billing. The smart grid encompasses
customer technologies, field operational
technologies and smart metering. It also
includes the back-office applications
and integration technologies required
to manage, analyze, and route increased
amounts of real-time meter, sensor,
and control data. A smart utility is
ultimately characterized by distributed
intelligence, adaptive self-healing, and
multi-way communications across
the entire energy delivery chain.
With the advent of smart meters and
smart grids is the notion of the smart
customer. Smart customers want to
engage with utilities via smart devices
and portals; they want to adjust their
energy use based on real-time data. To
meet these expectations, utilities must
encourage conservation by providing
accurate usage data delivered via
convenient channels. Utilities also
need to provide more information
on outages, accelerate service order
response, enable environmental
choice, and improve customer-side
operations and billing accuracy.
Supporting smart utilities
with a joint Accenture and
Oracle solution
The smart utility offering from
Accenture and Oracle covers key
operational processes and functions for
utilities with solutions that encompass
smart meters, smart grids, and smart
customers. This partnership combines
Oracle’s applications, technology,
and hardware with Accenture’s
value-added services, best-practice
processes, and intellectual assets.
The right expertise
Oracle’s track record in utilities
spans 30 years, includes hundreds of
industry experts, and encompasses
more than 2,600 utility customers
globally. Accenture has managed
utility change transformation for
30 years, and has 10,000 people
supporting utility clients around the
world. In addition Accenture has over
200 consultants across the globe
who focus on delivering Oracle utility
industry solutions. Accenture and
Oracle know the benefits of customer
information systems, meter data
management, and smart meter and
grid infrastructure. This knowledge
and experience means that Accenture
and Oracle not only understand the
challenges facing the utilities industry,
but can also address them in the
quickest, most effective manner.
The right team
Accenture and Oracle have worked
together on hundreds of utility projects
at companies in Asia, Europe, North
America and Latin America. Accenture
brings process, technology and people
with deep industry experience to
support a utility’s transformation.
Oracle provides complete, open and
integrated applications, technology and
hardware. These time- and cost-saving
integrated applications are bundled
with industry insights to provide an
approach focused on achieving the
lowest possible risk and greatest
opportunity for success. With an
unparalleled track record of successful
smart utility projects, the Accenture
and Oracle team is the logical choice
for a fast-track approach to smart
grid and smart metering success.
The right technology
Oracle’s smart grid solutions around
outage and distribution management,
along with its smart metering solutions
to manage meter data, provide utilities
with the end-to-end applications
needed for the rollout of a smart
grid implementation. These solutions,
coupled with Oracle’s customer care
and billing products, support smart
customers by enabling more efficient,
effective ways to access information
and interact with utilities. This critical
foundation of data management and
open standards integration, security
and monitoring software strengthens
the smart utility. Combined with
Accenture’s adaptive industry-specific
business process acceleration and
rapid implementation services, this
technology provides lower total cost
of ownership, reduced deployment
risk, and increased scalability,
availability and serviceability.
The right approach
Accenture and Oracle enable utilities to
leverage existing IT investments. Clients
can begin with one best-of-breed
solution and integrate it to existing
applications. Or they can implement
several pre-integrated applications with
out-of-the-box, cross-departmental
business processes. Accenture’s
implementation teams provide
consulting, blueprinting, program
management and solution delivery
services—all based on frameworks for
accelerating smart grid implementations
while reducing deployment risks.
Together, Accenture and Oracle have the
experience, resources and knowledge to
help the world’s most forward-thinking
utilities transform themselves by
focusing on actionable information,
energy efficiency and customers.
For more information,
contact:
Martin de Weerdt
martin.c.de.weerdt
+31 20 4928207
Julien Groues
[email protected]
+33 1 5760 2188
About Accenture
About Oracle
About Oracle Utilities
Accenture is a global management
consulting, technology services and
outsourcing company, with 257,000
people serving clients in more than
120 countries. Combining unparalleled
experience, comprehensive capabilities
across all industries and business
functions, and extensive research on
the world’s most successful companies,
Accenture collaborates with clients to
help them become high-performance
businesses and governments. The
company generated net revenues of
US$27.9 billion for the fiscal year
ended Aug. 31, 2012. Its home page is
www.accenture.com.
Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) engineers
hardware and software to work
together in the cloud and in your
data center. With more than 390,000
customers—including 100 of the
Fortune 100—in more than 145
countries around the globe, Oracle
is the only vendor able to offer a
complete technology stack in which
every layer is engineered to work
together as a single system. Oracle’s
industry-leading on-premises and
cloud-based solutions give customers
complete deployment flexibility
and unmatched benefits including
unbreakable security, high availability,
scalability, energy efficiency, powerful
performance, and low total cost of
ownership. For more information,
visit oracle.com.
Oracle Utilities delivers proven software
applications that help utilities of all
types and sizes achieve competitive
advantage, business performance
excellence and a lower total cost of
technology ownership. Oracle Utilities
integrates industry-specific customer
care and billing, network management,
work and asset management, mobile
workforce management and meter
data management applications with
the capabilities of Oracle’s industryleading enterprise applications,
business intelligence tools, middleware,
database technologies, as well as
servers and storage. The software
enables customers to adapt more
nimbly to market deregulation, meet
ever-evolving customer demands and
deliver on environmental conservation
commitments. Additionally, Oracle
Utilities helps utilities prepare for smart
metering and smart grid initiatives that
enhance efficiency and provide critical
intelligence metrics that can help drive
more-informed energy and water usage
decisions for consumers and businesses.
For more information, visit
www.oracle.com/goto/utilities.
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