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Educating Future Customers Through K-12 Outreach
April 19, 2007
Many energy providers are using innovative methods for reaching the education sector. Within the K–12 segment, there are numerous opportunities to creatively and cost-effectively engage teachers, students, and parents—and through them, the broader community as well. In this report, we ...
Content type: Core Report, Service Report | Document ID: MS-2 | Author: Kelsie Bell, Gwen Farnsworth
Collaborating with Customers for Mutual Advantage: KCP&L Brings Stakeholders into Its Long-Term Energy Planning Process
November 1, 2006
With projects worth more than $200 billion planned for the next few years, the utility industry is in the midst of an historic capital construction phase. Rather than follow the industry’s traditional approach to capital projects—announce, build, litigate—Kansas City Power & Light (KCP&L) started ...
Content type: Core Report | Document ID: ER-06-13 | Author: John Egan
Operational Improvements That Boost Utility Customer Satisfaction
July 1, 2006
There's a perception that customer satisfaction is something that requires specific outlays and investments, but we've uncovered numerous utilities that have cut costs, streamlined processes, and energized employees, while increasing customer satisfaction. Good things happen to those who work hard ...
Content type: Best Practice, Core Report | Document ID: ER-06-09 | Author: John Egan
Capturing the Financial Benefits of Residential Customer Satisfaction
May 1, 2006
In this first of two reports on customer satisfaction, we show how improvements in mass-market customer satisfaction could shave millions of dollars off a utility’s annual interest costs, lead to more supportive regulatory treatment, and potentially result in higher shareholder returns. Drawing ...
Content type: Core Report | Document ID: ER-06-06 | Author: John Egan
Making Peace with an Angry Public: Defusing Customer Anger over Sharp Price Increases and Other Negative Events
January 1, 2006
Company image and customer satisfaction scores are falling or are poised for a fall as utilities implement sharp price increases for electricity, natural gas, or both. In more than a few cases the current “energy price crisis” comes after utilities’ credibility has been sapped by perceived operational ...
Content type: Core Report | Document ID: ER-06-01 | Author: John Egan
Improving the Energy Performance of Green Buildings
July 1, 2005
Researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory recently helped design, construct, and monitor six low-energy buildings. But when they analyzed the buildings' actual performance, they found that all six were using more energy than had been predicted.
Content type: Core Report | Document ID: ER-05-11 | Author: Rachel Reiss
Utility Customers as Innovators for New Products, Services, and Programs
July 1, 2005
Product developers and marketers use customer research to gauge interest in a wide variety of topics, issues, services, and products. But by bringing customers in earlier and engaging them more deeply throughout the development process, companies are finding that they can reduce development time, create ...
Content type: Core Report | Document ID: ER-05-12 | Author: William LeBlanc
BPL Business Planning: An E Source Roundtable
March 1, 2005
Broadband over power line (BPL) technologies have been proved and validated in numerous technology tests and pilot programs. Utility regulators have signaled their support for broad deployment of BPL technologies. The next strategic challenge facing utilities will be deciding whether, when, where, why, ...
Content type: Core Report | Document ID: ER-05-7 | Author: John Egan
Broadband over Power Lines: What Regulators Think
January 1, 2005
Electric utilities are investigating a new technology that can deliver fast Internet service to customers while enabling a variety of programs and processes that could help utilities cut costs and deliver better-quality customer care. Known as broadband over power lines (BPL), the technology was tested ...
Content type: Core Report | Document ID: ER-05-1 | Author: John Egan
Escaping Enron's Shadow How ESPs Can Improve Their Businesses by Restoring Stakeholder Trust
October 1, 2004
Fundamental misgivings about Big Business in general and energy service providers (ESPs) in particular persist among consumers throughout North America. Many consumers believe that ESPs have abandoned their traditional commitments to important stakeholder groups such as employees, customers, and communities. ...
Content type: Core Report | Document ID: ER-04-14 | Author: John Egan
Enhancing Business Strategy with Market Research
July 1, 2004
As retail electric and gas markets continue to evolve, utilities and competitive ESPs are changing both the type of market research they do and the amount of research they conduct. In this report, we explore these recent shifts and assess the benefits and risks of investing—or not investing—in primary ...
Content type: Core Report | Document ID: ER-04-10 | Author: William LeBlanc
Guerrilla Marketing: Low-Cost Tactics Maximize Marketing ROI
May 1, 2004
In today’s strenuous economic environment, many ESPs are feeling the pressure of smaller marketing budgets and reduced staffing, while coping with customers and prospects that are less likely to spend money on products and services. What can a marketer do when traditional approaches are proving less ...
Content type: Core Report | Document ID: ER-04-06 | Author: Matthew Joyce
Creating Compelling Customer Connections: A Fresh Look at ESP Branding
March 1, 2004
Utility companies embraced branding in the late 1990s as part of their transition to a more competitive business environment. But with utility restructuring stuck in neutral in the U.S., is branding relevant anymore? We’ve interviewed officials at energy service providers in the U.S. and the UK to ...
Content type: Core Report | Document ID: ER-04-04 | Author: John Egan, Jon Slowe, Mary O'Driscoll
Time Bomb or Time Frame? Rate Freezes, Standard-Offer Service, and the Next Phase of Electricity Restructuring
January 1, 2004
The impending expiration of long-frozen standard-offer service rates in more than a dozen U.S. state and Canadian provincial markets signals an important new phase for electric industry restructuring. In this report, we look at what can utilities and public officials learn from the breakdowns that occurred ...
Content type: Core Report | Document ID: ER-04-01 | Author: Paul Mahler, John Egan
Key Account Management: Creating Value Through Collaboration
September 1, 2003
Key account management (KAM) programs are about more than customer retention: they’re also about revenue creation, customer loyalty, and process improvements. By committing to long-term relationships with their customers, some firms are finding ways to help their customers save money while simultaneously ...
Content type: Core Report | Document ID: ER-03-15 | Author: Jon Starr
Building Value with Distributed Generation: Changing Customer Needs Create New Business Opportunities for Nimble ESPs
July 1, 2003
A growing number of energy service providers (ESPs) have recently entered the distributed generation (DG) business. With several business models to choose from, many are finding significant success in DG initiatives. But the financial potential should not overshadow the more compelling strategic reason ...
Content type: Core Report | Document ID: ER-03-14 | Author: Christine Hurley, Jon Slowe, John Egan
Reviving ESP Marketing Strategy with Experiential Marketing
March 1, 2003
Category leaders like Coca Cola, MasterCard, and Apple are using marketing strategies that are very different from traditional methods, and that fresh approach has generated significant amounts of revenue, profit, and loyalty. These leaders are using “experiential marketing” to design and deliver ...
Content type: Core Report | Document ID: ER-03-05 | Author: John Egan, Anne Peters
PUHCA's Progeny: Corporate Scandals Will Result in Tough New Business Restrictions on ESPs
January 1, 2003
Corporate scandals rocked the U.S. throughout 2002. In the energy industry, Enron, Dynegy, Reliant, and El Paso, among others, drew prominent media coverage for their alleged and acknowledged misdeeds. In response to the upheaval, Congress enacted the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, designed to crack down on financial ...
Content type: Core Report | Document ID: ER-03-03 | Author: John Egan
The Strategic Value of Intelligence: Industry Turmoil Makes Intelligence Even More Vital
November 1, 2002
ESPs today are cutting their investment in competitive intelligence (CI) as rapidly as they were increasing spending on CI back in the late 1990s. We think the current cutbacks are ill advised and even potentially dangerous. Industry turmoil and events outside the industry have scrambled many ESPs’ ...
Content type: Core Report | Document ID: ER-02-17 | Author: John Egan
Building Resilient Strategies Through Scenario Planning
October 1, 2002
External forces, such as technological advances, global economic disruptions, social shifts, or political upheavals, can convulse any industry overnight. Leading-edge companies like Shell Oil and Duke Energy have long used scenario planning to better prepare their businesses to survive and thrive during ...
Content type: Core Report | Document ID: SIP-XV | Author: Matthew Joyce, John Egan, Michael Shepard, James Newcomb
Closing the Trust Gap
July 1, 2002
A “trust gap” has opened up between some energy service providers and their customers. Events that have rocked the energy industry—such as Enron’s collapse, soaring prices, power emergencies, and breakdowns in basic service—have eroded the foundations of trust between corporations and consumers. ...
Content type: Core Report | Document ID: ER-02-13 | Author: John Egan
Pursuing Energy Services Excellence
May 1, 2002
E source identified a number of well-positioned energy services companies, conducted extensive interviews throughout those organizations, interviewed customers, and identified distinct competitive strengths and business processes of leading firms. Written in the spirit of In Search of Excellence and ...
Content type: Core Report | Document ID: ER-02-09 | Author: Matthew Joyce, John Egan, Bill LeBlanc
Making Diversification Work: Insights from Successful CEOs
March 1, 2002
U.S.-based ESPs have an estimated $19 billion of cash sitting on their collective balance sheets, and corporate leaders are trying to decide where to deploy it. Many will deploy most of the cash in the core utilities business. But the E source Strategy & Marketing Service sees significant investment ...
Content type: Core Report | Document ID: ER-02-03 | Author: John Egan
Extending the Enterprise: How to Revolutionize the Retail Energy Business with Supply Chain Management
January 1, 2002
Highly competitive firms like Wal-Mart, Honda, John Deere, and Blockbuster have used the principles and practices of supply chain management (SCM) to capture superior profitability and market dominance during the past 10 to 15 years. E Source research has uncovered a few utilities and energy service ...
Content type: Core Report | Document ID: SIP-XIV | Author: John Egan, Jasbir Arora, M. Johnny Rungtusanatham
Restoring Customer Trust: Report on the 9th Annual E Source Strategic Retreat
September 1, 2001
In the wake of California’s restructuring debacle, electricity customers nationwide have become anxious, skeptical, and hypersensitive to the performance of their energy providers. This crisis in customer trust was an important topic of discussion at the May 2000 E Source Strategic Issues Retreat, ...
Content type: Core Report | Document ID: ER-01-14 | Author: Matthew Joyce
Building Value Amid Uncertainty: Ideas from Strategists and Distribution Company Leaders
May 1, 2001
Against the backdrop of California’s collapsing electricity market, E Source held its 2nd Annual Distribution Company Strategy Conference in January 2001. The report drawn from this conference highlights opportunities for distribution companies to create shareholder value both internally—through ...
Content type: Core Report | Document ID: ER-01-08 | Author: John Egan
Preventing the Next Electricity Crisis: Energy Experts Offer Their Recommendations
May 1, 2001
California’s electricity restructuring effort has gone dark, but that doesn’t mean that other states or the federal government should back away from restructuring electric or gas markets, according to a panel of energy experts who spoke at a teleconference assessing the implications of California’s ...
Content type: Core Report | Document ID: ER-01-09 | Author: John Egan, Matthew Joyce
ESP Mergers: Promises and Perils
February 1, 2001
U.S. utilities have been involved with over $400 billion worth of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) between 1996 and 2000. M&As are high-risk endeavors that often disappoint the management of the acquiring firm, but some companies have developed a particular competency in integrating acquisitions. This ...
Content type: Core Report | Document ID: ER-01-02 | Author: John Egan
Driving Decisions and Shaping Strategy with Competitive Intelligence
November 1, 2000
As retail energy businesses go through restructuring, utilities and other energy service providers (ESPs) have boosted spending on competitive intelligence (CI) to support a variety of strategic initiatives, including product launches, mergers and acquisitions, and market-entry decisions. Interviews ...
Content type: Core Report | Document ID: ER-00-17 | Author: John Egan
California's Summer of Discontent
November 1, 2000
Breathtaking price volatility ruled the California wholesale electric market during the summer of 2000. Because San Diego Gas & Electric has paid off its stranded costs early, its customers were fully exposed to this volatility. And because customers of Pacific Gas & Electric and Southern California ...
Content type: Core Report | Document ID: ER-00-19 | Author: John Egan
