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The rate of change in the world is accelerating, unpredictable, and unprecedented. The digital revolution, changing climate, frequent disasters and uncertain geopolitical future, provide the backdrop forcing the organisations to look beyond near-term goals. Organisations must be able to not only withstand such unpredictable threats but also lead change in order to stay afloat and emerge stronger. They must, in essence, inculcate out-of-the-box thinking to be resilient.
In reality, there is no other choice left for traditional businesses with an established set of fixed rules and regulations and business processes, but to rapidly think and act unconventionally, in order to gain opportunities out of disruptions and ensure relevance for continuance in this constantly evolving business paradigm.
A company like CESC, which has a legacy of over 120 years, needs to allocate one-third of the available resources including time, people, and capital to bolster its core business as a Power Utility. Another one-third of the resources should be allocated for scaling up fresh business initiatives that have successfully withstood Proof-of-Concept (POC) testing and application. The balance one-third of the resources should be invested in testing out cutting-edge, innovative, disruptive, newer technologies and business models, which have already been adopted by other industries.
The Power scenario is rapidly changing across the world and the 5Ds are fuelling the changes - Digital Transformation, Decarbonisation, Decentralisation, Disaster Management & Deregulation.
To grow beyond legacies, we have curated our strategies around these 5Ds and have been adopting various futuristic technology initiatives for further enhancing Operational Efficiencies, User / Consumer / Employee Experience (UX / CX / EX) and Optimizing Cost-To-Serve.
In context to Digital Transformation, we have leveraged Industry 4.0-based IoT Technologies like embedded remote IoT-based sensors in transformers & switchgears, monitoring partial discharge of different plant & equipment and have proactively transformed our asset health maintenance regime from ‘preventive’ to ‘predictive’.
The adoption of these technologies has helped us in keeping the health of our assets in pristine condition and the same has been successful in ensuring minimal downtime to our network, especially during the pandemic. In order to provide Hi-Touch Consumer Experience for a No-Touch world, we commenced with chatbot as a part of our digitalisation process and later we tried out and implemented WhatsApp Bot, one of the platforms that our Consumers use most frequently.
In 2022, we introduced “Aastha” — a Digital Voice Assistant, which is a disruptive and innovative technology, adopted for serving our Consumers better. This Voice Bot is practically a humanoid, which is enabled with Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML) and Natural Language Generation & Processing (NLG/NLP) to ensure delight in our consumer service.
It is integrated with our existing CRM and Outage Management System, to ensure quick system-driven assistance to our Consumers. Decarbonisation efforts help achieve emission reduction targets to mitigate climate change, which is a persistent global challenge. As electric energy is clean, safe and affordable, we are actively preparing the eco-system for its adoption at the point of use.
We have embarked on a journey of creating the eco-system for Electric Vehicle charging infrastructure (EVCS). We also are in the process of transforming consumers for use of electric cooking. In order to reduce our carbon footprints, we are also converting our buildings and sub-stations into Green Buildings.
In the journey of mitigating adverse effect of climate change, we are working with stakeholders like commercial and individual consumers for converting their process applications to electric e.g. electric furnace, electric heat pump, battery energy storage system in place of DG sets. While all these conversions to Electric Energy helps us move towards a ‘Net Zero’ world, it will also simultaneously enhance our Electric consumption/Revenue.
On the decentralisation front, we have installed a 315 kWh Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) in Jan ’21 and launched our first microgrid with floating solar and BESS on May ’22, which will cater to local load by sourcing green power and enhance the reliability of power supply during any grid disturbance or natural disaster.
In the recent past, CESC has experienced two back-to-back natural disasters - Super Cyclonic ‘Amphan’ in May 2020 and Severe Cyclonic Storm ‘Yaas’ in May 2021, both occurring in the midst of pandemic. We are reinforcing the robustness and resilience of our electrical network with the inculcation of various technological innovations. The Electricity (Amendment) Bill, 2022, which will permit multiple discoms to operate in the same area, creating opportunities for private discoms like us to expand footprints in other attractive locations. In order to succeed in a competitive market, we are geared up to address the scenario by building an agile automated workflow system through business process automation and automated workforce, to deliver high level of customer services and retention, by leveraging the relationships through our Customer Service Centres and Key Account Managers (KAM).
The basic philosophy of our B2C kind of business where we deal with about 3.5 million consumers is that we cannot afford to fail and create consumer dissatisfaction or outcry, as power is the essential service for any residential/commercial/industrial consumers. So, we always try out technologies in a controlled environment for captive use and then extend for the external world to experience.
We always start small through a Proof of Concept (POC) generally on a Free Of Charge (FOC) basis. On identifying that the concept / technology is providing the desired return on investment (ROI), we adopt them cautiously. This approach has helped us to mitigate any chances of falling flat while implementing.
As a leading Power Utility with a growing legacy of 125 years, we have tried and tested out many innovative technologies and business applications to enhance our operational parameters, customer service and contain cost-to-serve. For example, we have tried out immersive technologies like Augmented Reality / Virtual Reality / Mixed Reality (AR/VR/MR) including Digital Twins in POC mode and later have scaled up to multiple locations.
Adoption of this technology has enabled us to operate remotely and diagnose faults for faster restoration and enhance Customer Experience (CX).
Businesses currently fluctuate between brick and mortar, digital and gig economy models depending on the world's present conditions, which are influenced by numerous unknown factors like geopolitical situations, climatic disasters, pandemic etc. Hence, business leaders should preferably distribute resources in different baskets and develop agile, frugal and disruptive business models in order to help them switch between different dynamic business structures depending on the prevailing scenario.
Therefore, we should be fleet-footed to quickly shift gears and adapt to the rapidly changing conditions because change is the only constant and this has been reinforced by unravelling uncertainties that are happening around the world. It literally means that we should take advantage of the uncertainties to create new opportunities through appropriate business models and then leverage them to stay afloat and rise thereafter.
Hence, it is pertinent to re-allocate resources, in order to distribute the risks and opportunities between development of existing core business, upscaling tried out concepts on new business avenues, and reimaging the future for untapped and unserved markets. We should chart the new business trends and top technological advancements happening around the world and be in the quest of making ourselves abreast & aligned with those future trends. It’s necessary that we try out various Innovative initiatives, in order for businesses to stay relevant for another century.
We also need sustainability with inclusive growth to fortify our relevance in the future. The only option available is to leverage the uncertain future and consider these opportunities to reinvent, reskill, retrain and redevelop ourselves for leading the change instead of following the same.
One of the examples in our case is trying out the Block Chain technology for Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Energy Management as a futuristic model. Our team is also toying with the idea of Web 3.0 application for consumer service delivery, in order to create consumer stickiness. We must always look out for solutions that are disruptive and transformative in nature, which help in leapfrogging and achieving quantum improvements instead of incremental gains only.
