Digitalisation defines industry-leading energy organisations survey finds

Top energy organisations across many dimensions of business and operations are generally also industry leaders in digitalisation, DNV’s latest energy industry insight has revealed.

The insight, which is based on a DNV survey of 1,289 senior professionals across the energy sector – of which 28% identified their organisation as an industry leader in digitalisation and data-driven strategies and 37% the opposite – found that leading on digital could be associated with leading on the energy transition.

Moreover the digital leaders were more optimistic on reaching decarbonisation and other targets such as revenue.

Almost all of them also said that data driven strategies were changing the way of working in their organisations, with the top three most impactful data-driven applications identified as optimising processes, integrating systems and databases and automating operations.

Have you read?
AI is draining the electric grid – this energy tech will save us
Eurelectric urges accelerated grid expansion and digitalisation to meet green goals

Other data-driven innovations, such as predictive maintenance and supply chain management, were also rated by over half of the leaders but notably personalised recommendations for employees and/or customers and quantifying greenhouse gas emissions were considered the least impactful.

Looking to the year ahead over two thirds of digital leaders indicated the intention to use AI driven applications in their operations and almost all – and almost two-thirds of the laggards – to prioritise improving the quality and availability of data.

Other top emerging innovations were indicated to be digital twins and remote survey technologies.

However, the top barrier for these leaders was considered to be the cybersecurity risk, while for the laggards resistance to change and the lack of an effective digitalisation strategy were cited – this latter the converse of what digital leaders cited as making them stand out.

“Transformations of all kinds demand that organizations think differently,” states DNV in its study.

“Whether it’s digitalisation or decarbonisation, successful organisations adapt their strategies and processes in ways that harness the best new technologies while also making the most of the assets and resources already deployed.”

In conclusion the report says: “The defining characteristic of digital leaders, setting them apart from others, is not just the absence of resistance to change or the ability to adapt, but their proactive capacity to seize the opportunities that inevitably accompany change.”