Fueling the future of the energy sector

Significant changes are currently underway in the Belgian Energy sector, necessitating organizations to adapt and transform their business strategies. This is imperative to meet evolving customer demands and leverage available technologies that are profoundly impacting the existing operating framework of power and utilities.

As the European Union (EU) strives to reduce its carbon footprint in the energy sector, the emergence of distributed energy, energy storage, and smart metering for real-time usage data collection presents new opportunities for various stakeholders and business models. With customers becoming more actively involved and the strain on the energy grid increasing, many are reevaluating their operational approaches and customer relationships to ensure the long-term sustainability of both themselves and the network.

Innovations such as data analytics and intelligent automation hold the potential to enhance productivity and foster the creation of novel products and services, provided that proper risk management measures are in place.

These insights are shared in our Future of Energy: Voices on 2030 report with the bold predictions of some of the most knowledgeable voices in the sector:

‘Voices on 2030’ predicts a future where data will shape the energy landscape in three pivotal ways: empowering consumers, optimizing infrastructure investments, and enabling flexibility and demand-side management. This is hugely complex with a new ecosystem of actors and important shifts in physical and digital infrastructure. In this evolving landscape, the KPMG Connected Approach embraces these shifts and prepares for the future, by defining a roadmap to maximize ROI on data and AI investments. It guides companies in making data-backed decisions, optimizing customer focus, asset management, and minimizing operational costs.

By bridging front and back-office operations to turn data into actionable decisions, companies can prioritize the customer experience and leverage AI-driven solutions like chatbots and predictive analytics to provide personalized insights to support the data digital transformation.

For dynamic and active consumers, suppliers must adapt their business model and provide tailored solutions for their clients, such as interactive platforms, energy management and flexibility packages. The simple, one-sided energy offer is over and gives way to an intertwined relationship between producers, suppliers, new actors like photovoltaic / electrical vehicle focused companies and a new conscious type of consumer. It's a dialogue where customers wield significant influence. As participants in the flexibility market, they offer energy consumption flexibility and reap the benefits in cost savings. Smart technologies, from digital meters to electric vehicles, empower them to engage more deeply with the energy ecosystem.

Here, the KPMG Connected Approach focuses on seamlessly connecting front and back-office teams. This framework ensures that customer concerns are met swiftly, transforming interactions into meaningful dialogues and forging a strong bond between the customer and the energy provider, and amplifying customer engagement and responsiveness through responsive customer service setups. It decomplexifies, guiding the transformation in an agile way with concrete steps.

The KPMG Connected Approach is more than just a digital transformation; it's about a secured digital transformation, embedding cybersecurity practices into every facet of an energy company's operations, from risk assessment to employee training and incident response. The Connected Approach strengthens organizations against cyber threats to ensure that energy companies evolve and embrace digital technologies securely, protecting critical infrastructure to safeguard the reliability and resilience of their operations.

As 'Voices on 2030' echoed the challenges of the energy sector, the KPMG Connected Approach emerges as a unifying force, intertwining the data-driven narrative and customer-centricity. Our goal is to help clients understand the impact of the changing landscape on their businesses and to identify opportunities to grow and flourish in the current and future energy environments. Our multidisciplinary team of more than 21,000 dedicated energy experts worldwide help clients create robust, sustainable and flexible strategies, teams and operating models that can quickly adapt in a dynamically unfolding future.