Faced with many legacy customer information systems (CISs), the utility sector is increasing investments in cloud-enabled customer systems to improve the customer’s overall digital experience.

The utility industry’s commodities business is under constant pressure with volatility in supply and demand, as well as uncertainty in pricing. To hedge some of that risk, utilities are expanding cloud investments in value-added customer services to build additional revenue streams over and above the sales and delivery of energy commodities. This approach includes providing customers with clean energy products and choices such as energy efficiency programs, distributed energy resources (DERs), electric vehicle (EV) programs and rebates, and green energy tariffs. These programs provide environmentally friendly utility products and services to customers and help utilities gain and retain their customer base.