Technology as Cultural Change Agent

Cisco and Intel partnering in innovation

CIO Eric Slavinsky works with Cisco and LG&E and KU operations personnel to drive change

“The tenure of our workforce is 15 to 30 years on average,” says Eric Slavinsky, CIO of Louisville Gas and Electric and Kentucky Utilities Energy LLC (LG&E and KU). “And that leads to a lot of entrenched behaviors.”

When Slavinsky joined the utility two and half years ago, he sought to reevaluate those behaviors and find new opportunities for efficiency. He wanted to solve business challenges. And he was focused on enabling his workforce to be productive anytime, anywhere.

“We wanted to change our business culture,” Slavinsky says, “through IT.”

Two factors had always been in the way. First, the company was relying on a host of manual processes, which dictated where and how company personnel could perform their jobs. Second, critical information was stashed in a variety of disparate systems, requiring a tremendous amount of work to pull information together, and making it nearly impossible to perform data analyses thereafter.

“To continue providing our customers with cost-effective electric and gas service,” Slavinsky says, “we needed greater transparency, better decision making, and a more productive workforce.”

For an industry that is often resistant to change, cultural transformation could not be forced or dictated. The utility’s operations teams would need to be included in the upfront decision making, and empowered in their day-to-day activities.

“You can’t just push change on people,” Slavinsky claims. “You need to give them a sense of ownership and participation. And then you need to show them how change can positively impact their job. It’s all about empowering the business through the use of technology.”

Utilizing analytics, mobility, and collaboration

To influence longstanding behaviors and processes, Slavinsky wanted to create transparency between internal systems, services, and employees. That started with data. Giving the LG&E and KU workforce better access to the company’s information resources would reduce the amount of time to answer everyday questions, conduct routine reporting, and make effective business decisions.

“In the past, we had a tough time accessing data, let alone analyzing it,” Slavinsky explains. “We were still printing out spreadsheets from different systems, then manually piecing everything together. It was slow and rarely provided a comprehensive, timely view of our operations.”

LG&E and KU implemented business intelligence software on a new, fully integrated platform to improve information access and utilization. Running on the Cisco® Unified Computing System™, which is based on Intel® Xeon® processors, the SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse Accelerator pulls together real-time information from all of the utility’s operations systems and provides sophisticated analytics capabilities.

“The less time you spend searching for and integrating data, the more time you have to maximize it,” says Slavinsky. “Our business intelligence system is cutting the time it takes to produce monthly reports in half. It’s eliminating many of the old manual printing processes. And most importantly, it is enabling our workforce to conduct analyses that lead to faster, more informed decisions.”

How one utility company is utilizing analytics, mobility, and collaboration technologies to change behavioral norms and improve operational efficiency.

Perspectives and Solutions

Technology as cultural change agent, efficiency booster

Spring 2013Unleashing IT

Those decisions can now be made anytime, anywhere, thanks to improved mobility and collaboration capabilities. The utility is using Cisco Unified Communications Manager and Cisco mobility platforms to extend the reach of its applications environment, and deliver consistency no matter how or where it is accessed.

Through a Bring-Your-Own-Device program, mobility software, and virtual desktop integration operations personnel can tap the utility’s business applications from any location, and have the same experience whether they are using a tablet, laptop, or personal computer. This allows them to be as productive in the field as they are in the office.

“The mobile system is a wealth of information at your fingertips,” says Terry Walker, Service Technician for LG&E and KU. “Every day I log on and use it to view system maps, create work request maps, find locations of trouble calls, log inspections, and any other job that comes my way. It’s made my job a lot more efficient.”

The company is also utilizing collaboration tools, such as instant messaging, chat, and video. LG&E and KU engineering experts will soon be able to help diagnose and fix problems remotely, reducing the time and cost of travel and repairs. The mobility and collaboration capabilities have been particularly useful during storms and outages, when the business must go into “crisis response mode” and coordinate large groups of field employees.

“We pride ourselves on superior customer service, especially during storms,” says Slavinsky. “Our new computing platform and capabilities are making us much more effective and coordinated during outages, and that has a direct impact on our costs and customers.”

Through advanced analytics, mobility, and collaboration, Slavinsky is quickly transforming the culture and operational efficiency of LG&E and KU. And it’s working. The utility is one of the lowest-cost energy providers in the U.S., and has recently received best-in-class customer satisfaction ratings among Midwest utilities.

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Spring 2013Unleashing IT