Energy events have given us the opportunity to present the IFS story a number of times already this year, with European Utility Week in Vienna, November 6–8, rounding off the tour.
Leading up to that event I wanted to take the opportunity to highlight both what has gone before as well as what we will be showcasing in Vienna.
At Africa Utility Week in May we discussed how important it was to manage all of the investment that was being made in the region. According to a World Bank report prepared by Masami Kojima and Chris Trimble back in 2016:
Africa lags all other regions of the world in electricity generation capacity, per capita electricity consumption, and household access to electricity. Only one out of every three Africans has access to electricity. Power shortages are widespread, not least because utilities are cash-strapped and have allowed their assets to fall into disrepair.
The focus in Africa was therefore on asset management but also on how modern enterprise software could actively manage investment in projects such as constructing new generation facilities, new transmission capabilities or extensions to the electricity grid to get more villages and customers connected. As well as these challenges there are major issues around countries recovering their operational and capital costs; very few in the region are successfully managing this. A modern enterprise solution in this scenario provides a core IT hub from which all of the requisite business data can be delivered—one version of the truth. If an investment project is being managed through IFS Applications, for example, then cost, progress, performance, changes and variations can all be viewed in one solution.
Following on from this, we attended a utility conference in the UK and spoke there at length around integration to 3rd party packages, for example, that were managing the delivery of activities on the public road and street network. The challenges here are more mundane but can be super-disruptive from the public’s perspective as they involve ensuring that the utility companies work efficiently when digging and executing work in the neighborhood. The integration that we have built for one of our water network companies involves sending messages from IFS Applications to the Insights for Street Works product, which then manages the communication with the local authority. Integration to the enterprise software is made possible by the modern and open architecture released this year with IFS Applications.
Which leads nicely to the event in November @EUW_live. At this event we will be showcasing all of the work we have done to support smart meter roll-out programs using our industry leading FSM product plus the latest artificial intelligence developments within our contact center product suite. If you require more information specifically on the business case around AI, please download our whitepaper.
Please do not hesitate to get in contact with me and I look forward to catching up with you at the event. Our IFS booth is Hall B, Stand B.m8 – ideally, please schedule a meeting at our stand or you can just come along and speak with us. I can be reached at Colin Beaney.
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