Electrical Utility Company in Malaysia: Flipping the Switch to Digital

Bizzdesign Alfabet is different because their focus and goals are the same as ours: Successful project outcomes. Bizzdesign Alfabet will be giving us the blueprint we need to transform our IT into an efficient, stable and business-enabling force.

— IT Manager

The First Step in a Utility’s Digital Transformation

The utility is changing how Malaysians power their homes and businesses - with new initiatives like a 50 megawatt (MW) largescale solar plant and a photovoltaic energy offering for retail customers. Meanwhile its community programs are lighting the streets of remote villages and supporting aspiring engineers with scholarships and educational programs. This effort is paying off. It recently achieved an outstanding 8.1 Customer Satisfaction Index rating.

And the World Bank rated Malaysia 8th out of 190 countries in its Doing Business Report 2018 under Getting Electricity. But dark clouds are threatening the utility’s vision for the future. Coal still accounts for 55% of its power. And rising coal prices are eating up budget. Coupled with unrelenting growth in demand, driving internal cost efficiencies are now critical to business.

What’s more, the utility needs to accelerate service improvements as it faces a second, potentially greater threat: Market deregulation.

Ray of Light

The utility turned these challenges into an opportunity to flip the switch on for digital business transformation. But where to start? Like many companies, the utility’s view into its IT environment was via nothing more than a few Excel spreadsheets. Only with full visibility could it plan and build the future-ready enterprise architecture (EA) it required. For this, an EA mapping and planning solution was needed. Seeking the best, it looked to Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Architecture Tools.

Leaders were shortlisted. Ultimately they chose Bizzdesign Alfabet's Enterprise Architecture Management Platform. This was because Gartner had also rated Bizzdesign Alfabet as the leader for Integrated IT Portfolio Analysis Applications (IIPA). Bizzdesign Alfabet’s pre-sales process was superior as was its reputation for partnership. And Professional Services, its in-house team of experts, could implement solutions time- and cost-effectively. A local call center and support team rounded out Bizzdesign Alfabet’s offering - and sealed the deal.

The A-B-C’s of Efficiency

Just like energy efficiency audits, Bizzdesign Alfabet shows where IT resources are being wasted. A typical enterprise with 500 applications and 1,000 technical components can easily save one million dollars a year by using the Bizzdesign Alfabet platform to map, rationalize and eliminate redundant applications. Bizzdesign Alfabet’s team prepared a strawman business case which forecast company’s savings potential. Liking what it saw, the utility wanted to move quickly.

Lightning Speed

Feeling the need for speed, it brought in Professional Services (PS) to implement the first of three planned phases. PS quickly captured requirements, expertly configured Bizzdesign Alfabet and kicked data gathering into high gear. A typical Bizzdesign Alfabet implementation lasts 6 to 8 months. Data gathering is the most time-consuming step since all application and system information has to be collected, verified and then entered into Bizzdesign Alfabet.

The initial phase ran during the first five months of 2018 and captured application, component, local component, vendor and user data on 20% of the utility’s application environment. After the first peek into its IT environment using Bizzdesign Alfabet, the utility was brimming with confidence and keen to keep going!

Path to IT Enlightenment

In the next two phases all costs and interdependencies will be captured. With this complete view, the utility can optimize IT operating (OpEx) and capital (CapEx) expenditures. Remember the strawman business case? It calculates project payback in under one year. After that, it plans to roadmap its IT environment, inform its IT strategy and optimize its IT investment portfolio - all with its Bizzdesign Alfabet solution.

It will even automate application lifecycle management and power EA governance to mitigate business interruption even as new initiatives are aggressively rolled out. That sure beats using Excel.

The Never-ending Journey

Optimizing IT costs and streamlining EA is just the beginning. With its Bizzdesign Alfabet solution, the utility’s IT team has a powerful tool for turning business demands into highly consolidated projects. Implementing a few consolidated projects is much easier, not to mention quicker and cheaper. Simply put: It will be accomplishing more sooner - with less.

With cost-effectiveness and IT agility in sight thanks to Bizzdesign Alfabet, the utility will be able to quickly adopt or drop new technologies and applications with ease, innovate new services and evolve its business as the market and customers demand. Come rain or shine, this leading regional utility will be able to accelerate its move to renewable energy and roll out new services with startup speed.

Solution

• Enterprise architecture management powered by Bizzdesign Alfabet
• Architecture and implementation provided by Professional Services (PS)