Globally, the utility industry is on the receiving end of several common issues such as aging infrastructure, ever-increasing demand-supply deficit, lack of skilled workforce, complying with the regulatory mandates, deregulation, and competition, etc. Adding to this, there is a pressure of the changing dynamics of the utility-customer relationship. The digitally and socially connected consumers of today expect their service providers (including utilities) to deliver value beyond the primary services. Since, utilities have been traditionally slow adopters of technology, and they are now facing additional pressure in terms of meeting the customers’ expectations. Against all the odds, Smart Utility Systems has emerged as a technology company that is trying to not only help utilities manage technology solutions for water and energy Sustainability but also help consumers realize the importance of the drought crisis on a global level.
SUS is partnering with utilities around the globe to help address the various challenges they face by leveraging advanced technologies such as Cloud, Mobile, Big Data, Analytics and the Internet of Things (IoT).
A Vision Driven Leader
A technology and strategy leader with a strong vision and in-depth knowledge of the energy and utility industry, Deepak Garg, Founder and CEO, started this company six years back with a vision to contribute to the larger cause of addressing the challenges of Energy and Water Sustainability. He started SUS with the purpose of making a global difference, to the attitude and behavior of people with respect to energy and water use by transforming the traditional utility-customer relationship. Along with the team, he developed #1 Energy and Water Mobile Cloud Platform to Empower and Educate globally everybody via two-way real time communication on Mobile and Web channels.
At SUS, Deepak brings innovation, vision and strategy. Owing to the varied experiences, he has gathered while working at several Fortune 500+ multinational companies, and his global perspective and entrepreneurial-mindset, Deepak has developed high-powered business and technology teams and positioned SUS to be the most sought after technology solution provider to electric, gas and water utilities globally.
Deepak holds an MS degree in Computer Science with an executive management from the Stanford Graduate Business School and MIT.
What Gives SUS an edge above the other players in the Market
SCM® leverage technologies like AI (Artificial Intelligence), Machine Learning, Predictive Modelling, Principles of Gamification, Big Data BI & Analytics to provide a best-in-class User Interface (UI) to ensure best-in-class customer engagement. We help utilities improve their operational efficiency and maximize revenue realization, through mobile and cloud technologies.
“Our platform is the only cloud platform that facilitates a real-time, two-way communication between a utility and its customers to address any Self-Service, Customer Service and Operation Management like Demand Response, Smart Home Automation, etc. Leveraging SUS platform, utilities can collate and process the huge quantum of data and use built-in analytics to convert the humongous data into actionable insights. Our platform help utilities streamline their business processes, improve operational efficiency, reduce cost and maximize the return on infrastructure investments,” says Deepak.
SUS lends Seamless Integration
SUS cloud platforms can be seamlessly integrated with any back-end system that utilities use and reduces the deployment time, effort, complexity and implementation cost. Not only this, SUS also offers configurable modules that can be customized according to the specific requirements of the electric, water and gas utilities.
Redefining Innovation
SUS develop technology that connects and empowers utility customers to educate and share information in a user-friendly manner. Today, utilities are seeking ways to engage customers and inspire them to take actions in real-time. They recognize that customers want more in terms of two-way communication on energy/ water consumption, outages, billing and energy efficiency programs. It is important to take energy efficiency initiatives/ measures to help the utility sector transform from traditional to a digital era through true customer engagement and analytical solutions. In order to create an energy and water sustainable future and to keep customers updated, Smart Customer Mobile (SCM®) provides comprehensive customer engagement solution to the utility industry, educating and engaging customers worldwide while meeting their needs on the go. With a 360 degree view of customer interactions, Smart Customer Mobile (SCM®) is well known in the industry providing both customer and utility focused solution. Thus, helping utilities achieve greater customer satisfaction through effective customer engagement, educating end-consumers on usage, energy bills, energy and water conservation programs, etc. SUS is recognized as a thought leader in the industry for bringing the most innovative solutions in the market that also address the needs of end-customers.
SUS is transforming the utilities digitally by providing them Smart Analytics to change the transaction-based relationship between a utility and its customer into a more holistic and collaborative relationship.
Enhancing Customer Experience
SUS has a central philosophy that drives its core values on how customers should be treated at all times. Their vision to deliver customer oriented services to their utility clients is what makes them customer centric. SUS empowers utilities to make decisions that are for the benefit of the utility customer. They closely work with electric, water and gas utilities to meet the requirements that align with the utility’s core values, mission and vision and help them meet their customers’ expectations. Customer Service is part of their brand promise and SUS develops products that deliver true value to their clients with a customer centric approach. This focus is in-built in their product development and implementation. Through its award winning platforms, SUS help utilities improve customer experience and enable the utilities to engage, educate and empower their end-consumers.
Through built-in analytic tools, SUS help utilities identify their customers’ consumption trends and recommend energy saving and water conservation programs based on their historic usage and billing. SUS platform allows customers to report outages, leaks, thefts and other violations, thus, empowering them to take charge. This customized and targeted communication between utilities and their customers facilitated by SCM® not only helps the particular utility to optimize its revenue realization but also improves customer satisfaction while enabling utilities to unlock the value of effective customer engagement.
SUS Innovative Award Winning Services and Solutions
SUS endeavors to reach out to the best solutions to answer challenges faced by utilities.
Their Smart Customer Mobile (SCM®) cloud-based SaaS platform is an award-winning customer-engagement web and mobile platform that addresses key business challenges of utilities while supporting their smart grid or non-smart grid initiatives to maximize the ROI. Smart Mobile Workforce (SMW®) is a single integrated mobile workforce platform that helps utilities improve productivity and efficiency of utility employees by providing them a job, safety and asset related information in real-time on any device. Smart IQ (SiQ®) is an award-winning cloud-based data and analytics platform with built-in customer and operational analytic capabilities. This platform helps to deliver critical business insights based on the customer’s meter and usage data and makes use of the large amounts of data that utilities collect.
Addressing the Global Challenge: Drought
SUS has been continuously addressing utility industry challenges by creating an energy and water sustainable future. Besides our core utility solutions, SUS addresses California drought situation helping citizens with an innovative Smart H20 app providing them the ability to report violations related to water leak and waste water. Through this app, SUS is educating customers with water conservation programs advising them to minimize the use of their water usage and adhere to water use state mandates. With this, SUS stands out in the industry as a role model, emerging as the #1 company to address Energy and Water Sustainability, helping utilities in achieving their business objectives while educating customers to maximize the use of efficiency programs and increase the potential savings. As of today, utility customers are using SCM® platform with the ease to engage with their utility anytime, anywhere and on any device creating a sustainable future on earth.
Satisfied Clients with Assuring Success
“We are closely working with several top energy and utility companies who have benefitted greatly by the successful implementation of our platforms. The thing that most appeals to them are that our platforms seamlessly integrated with their existing utility systems without any extra time, costs and efforts in deployment,” assures Deepak. Further, he adds “Some of our clients in North America are amazed at how we have helped them establish a real-time, two-way communication with their customers through their preferred mode of communication via different channels and mediums.”
SUS’s clients have not only been able to maximize their ROI but also report much higher customer satisfaction. To sum it up in the words of one of their clients, “We knew it was time to take our technology to the next level, but we didn’t want to settle for a solution that would give us more problems to solve in the end. SCM® took our customer engagement to the next level and made a significant impact in several business processes and objectives.”
An Edge Above Competition
The utility industry continues to advance towards technological maturity as it continues to explore and deploy new and emerging innovations such as advanced applications to modernize distribution grid, enhance customer engagement, analyze big data, integrate AMI data for grid management, effective outage management, workforce optimization, etc. SUS’ leverage the opportunity to provide a proven set of tactics and tools for building and maintaining a customer-centric business strategy that not only support energy efficiency, water conservation and demand side management (DSM) but also facilitates adherence to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) initiatives and state mandate regulations to conserve energy and water .
With an industry leading practice to support customer service operations, SUS helps utilities improve their performance through analytical capabilities with key KPIs and helps in streamlining utility business processes. This business model for utilities ensures that they plan, operate and manage their integrated customer operations better, even though; they may be on different business platforms. The relative costs associated with research and development are translated to higher customer value in competitive markets, increased ROI and operational savings thus translating into a strategic benefit for providing better customer experiences.
Secret of Growth: ‘Successful Team, Successful Company, Successful Clients’
“Our strategy and product development teams spend a significant amount of time on research to keep themselves updated about the latest trends, challenges, future scenarios and technological advancements that affect the utility industry,” expounds Deepak. When developing new platforms or working on product enhancements, their focus remains on having a positive impact on the entire value chain of the utility industry and to help address the global challenges of energy and water sustainability. “Our focus is not only being a solution provider but a partner with the utilities in their journey of digital transformation. We do this by providing them with turnkey solutions that help them adopt a customer-centric business model thereby meeting their business objectives,” asserts Deepak.
TEAM- ‘Together Everyone Achieves More’
SUS teams are constantly striving to innovate best-in-class solutions using cutting-edge technology that can help utilities stay ahead of the curve regarding their digital transformation.
At SUS, their team makes the continuous efforts to make the entire digitization efforts of utilities as seamless and as simple as possible. SUS has a team of highly skilled and talented developers working under the able guidance of their senior leaders who are experts from the utility industry with a collective experience of over 100 years.
Being the ‘Best’ amidst changing market dynamics
SUS best in class, intuitive and user-friendly solutions in the area of customer engagement, workforce productivity, demand response management and data and analytics have made SUS the partner of choice for a majority of utilities globally. They have partnered with different sizes of utilities to improve their business processes, achieve operational excellence, reduce costs, maximize their return on smart infrastructure investments and address their key challenges of customer engagement, workforce mobility, demand response, regulatory compliance, etc. The utility industry is undergoing rapid transformation with changing market dynamics, technological advancements, changes in regulatory requirements and increased focus on reduced emissions. However, a key factor that is molding the business model of utilities is changing customer expectations. The utility industry is increasingly becoming customer-centric with an increased focus on customer engagement. At SUS, customer service is part of our brand promise and we aim to deliver customer oriented services to our utility clients. Thus, we envision developing customer-centric solutions and services for our clients whereby empowering customers with data and allowing them to change their behaviors, thus achieving energy sustainability and water conservation.
SUS is driven by a vision to help revolutionize the way the world approaches energy efficiency and water conservation. Thus, product innovation and development is a key focus area for us. We are also assessing and weighing various factors in high potential markets with the objective of expanding our geographic footprint.
We will continue to strive and develop innovative solutions that will contribute to achieve a sustainable future. Further, as part of our long-term strategy, we also look forward to strengthen our partner eco-system to build upon our delivery capabilities and be able to leverage opportunities in new avenues.
Expanding Geographical Footprints
“We are now expanding our geographical footprint and helping utilities across the world in their journey of digital transformation. At the same time, we are also working towards diversifying our product portfolio and creating solutions that help demolish future challenges of the utility industry. Part of that process is also focusing on exploring new disruptive technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, home automation, etc. We look forward to continuing to deliver solutions that allow us the opportunity to help build the energy and water sustainable future,” expounds Deepak.
