Power Forward with Digital Finance: Three Tools that Bring an Immediate ROI for Your Electric Company

摘要

The U.S. economy is quickly going digital. Between 2002 and 2016, the percentage of U.S. jobs that called for substantial digital knowledge more than quadrupled, from 4.8 percent to 23 percent, according to the Brookings Institution report, "Digitalization and the American Workforce." "Workers of every stripe-from corporate finance officers to salespeople to utility workers and nurses-are now spending sizable portions of their workdays using tools that require digital skills," the report summarizes. With this trend has come digital finance, and electric companies have an opportunity to pursue the potential benefits of putting the power of technology to work for savings, new revenue, and value-producing activities. One U.K. electric company recently reported a whopping 200 percent ROI from implementing new digital finance tools-in this case, robotic process automation (RPA), which the company used to automate repetitive tasks. RPA is expected to be a pivotal driver in the digital finance revolution. The global RPA market is anticipated to jump from $629 million in 2018 to $1.2 billion in 2021, according to HFS Research.