Accenture and SAP Team Up on Multichannel Customer Engagement Platform for Utilities

Accenture and SAP plan to jointly accelerate the development of solutions, based on a digital customer engagement platform, for utility companies to engage with customers through virtually any channel.

This announcement comes after both companies announced in January a comprehensive program of ongoing collaboration on the core development and go-to-market for SAP S/4HANA. In October, Accenture and SAP also announced their collaboration to develop predictive analytics solutions for asset management in the utilities industry to enable condition-based maintenance.

The new platform combines the SAP S/4HANA Utilities solution with SAP Hybris Cloud for Customer and SAP Multichannel Foundation to enable sales and service processes and efficient meter to cash management. Additional elements such as SAP Hybris Marketing, SAP Hybris Commerce, and SAP Hybris Billing solutions are integrated to create a 360-degree view of the customer as well as the management, selling, and billing of energy and non-energy products and services. Customer self-service interactions will be enabled through a portal, mobile apps, and social media.

Accenture's role includes accelerating the design, development, and integration of the next releases of S/4HANA Utilities, SAP Hybris Cloud for Customer, SAP Hybris Marketing, SAP Hybris Commerce, and SAP Hybris Billing. A new role-based SAP Fiori user experience will be available on the customer engagement platform.

"Utilities and their customers expect a world-class user experience that enables them to engage whenever, wherever, and through any channel at any time," said Matias Alonso, senior managing director of Accenture's utilities practice, in a statement. "This new customer information system brings together skilled innovation team members to capture the most value from digital technologies. This includes the cloud, Internet of Things, and predictive analytics that are vital for identifying and supporting new products and services that utilities create for their customers."

"Never before have utilities seen the rate of disruption to their business models occurring now," said Henry Bailey, global vice president of the Global Utilities Practice at SAP, in a statement. "The customer engagement platform is the next-generation solution based on SAP S/4HANA, with the new role-based SAP Fiori user experience to offer a 360-degree view of the customer to quickly and effectively address new opportunities today."

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