Each year, CGI meets face-to-face with business and IT leaders to hear their views on the trends affecting their organizations. In 2018, we conducted 127 in-person interviews with utilities executives to learn more about their top trends and priorities.

Pace of change accelerates, cybersecurity is a growing concern

The top trends in the utilities industry continue to be steady year‑on‑year, led by a focus on becoming digital organizations to meet customer expectations. Most notable in 2018 is the increasing importance of cybersecurity. Eighty-eight percent of utilities executives interviewed cite it as a growing concern, making it the second biggest trend. Assuring regulatory compliance and optimizing investment and operational costs of assets are the next top trends. This year, changing business and operating models to address distributed energy resources (DERs) rises in importance, entering the top five trends list for the first time.

Multi-pronged approach to drive digital maturity

This year, 59% of utilities executives interviewed have a defined digital transformation strategy, while 27% are starting to build a strategy. Of those with a defined strategy, 80% are building, launching, have operationalized or are realizing results from a strategy that includes their ecosystem of partners, and 86% are at similar stages with internally focused enterprise strategies.

Culture change is top challenge to digital transformation

The top barrier to digital transformation cited this year continues to be cultural change and change management, but with much greater emphasis. Cybersecurity also strengthens as a challenge.

Benchmarking internal IT and more

This year, business and IT executives interviewed ranked their satisfaction with their own IT organizations based on 10 key attributes of a world-class IT organization. Business leaders in this sector assessed their satisfaction with internal IT at a much lower level than their IT counterparts.

CGI can provide clients with a discussion of all available benchmarking, including each client’s positioning, on topics such as digital maturity, IT budgets, IT satisfaction, innovation investments and more.

Discover the insight

Download the 2018 CGI Client Global Insights utilities summary infographic for additional trend information. We also invite you to request a copy of our full report and to arrange a personal discussion with a CGI expert for further analysis and insights.

Also see the 2017 CGI Client Global Insights industry summaries.