Modernizing Utility operations for a US power company

Modernizing utility operations for a US power company

Delivered standardized workflows and automation that improved productivity and customer satisfaction

5 min read

A large investor-owned electric utility in the US reached a tipping point. Years of technical debt in its grid, fragmented back‑office systems and a billing setup that frustrated customers had piled up into an operational load that was no longer sustainable. At the same time, customer expectations were rising and demands for efficiency and transparency were getting louder. It was clear that small fixes would not be enough.

To drive a transformation of this scale, the client partnered with HCLTech, drawing on its deep experience in utility modernization and Oracle platforms. Together, they launched a broad program across grid intelligence, back‑office automation and customer experience. The goal was not just to fix today’s problems but to create a digital foundation built for long‑term growth and resilience.

The Challenges

Compounding pressures across grid operations and customer experience

The client faced a set of interrelated operational challenges that had accumulated over many years and were increasingly difficult to manage in isolation.

Legacy grid infrastructure: The outage management system carried over a decade of customizations and technical debt, with deep integrations across SCADA, GIS, Maximo, AMI and cloud-hosted services, making the environment fragile and difficult to upgrade without significant risk
Manual restoration processes: Restoration coordination relied heavily on manual workflows, limiting the speed and accuracy with which teams could respond to outages and leaving customers without timely updates during disruption events
Non-standardized operations: Business processes were inconsistent across the organization, making regulatory adjustments such as rate changes slow and disproportionately resource-intensive
Back-office inefficiency: Back-office tasks were largely manual, introducing delays and error rates that compounded over time and constrained team productivity
Billing gaps driving call volume: Customer invoices frequently contained incomplete or ambiguous information, triggering a high volume of avoidable support calls that consumed care center capacity and eroded satisfaction scores

The Objective

Create a customer-centric digital foundation that improves productivity and elevates the experience for both internal teams and customers.

Modernize the grid backbone
Standardize and automate core operations
Simplify and improve the billing experience
Expand intuitive self‑service capabilities
Transition to a modern, scalable digital platform

Modernizing utility operations for a US power company

The Solution

A coordinated modernization across grid intelligence and customer operations

OMS modernization: Upgraded the legacy outage management system to Oracle NMS 2.6, rationalizing over a decade of customizations and rebuilding integrations with SCADA, GIS, Maximo and AMI, executed with zero downtime at cutover
Grid intelligence: Deployed API-driven middleware and Oracle Analytics for real-time event orchestration, outage visualization and performance dashboards
Platform upgrade: Upgraded from Oracle Customer Care and Billing 2.5 to Oracle Customer to Meter 2.7, automating back-office workflows to reduce manual effort and error rates
Self-service and automation: Developed a self-service portal for customers to start, stop or transfer services and deployed automation bots for enrollment and service transfers
Billing and Web experience: Redesigned billing for clarity and re-architected the client website with real-time request tracking to reduce avoidable support calls
Ongoing advisory: Provided continued defect resolution, Oracle Utilities administration and advisory services across user experience and integrations

The Impact

3x Faster OMS processing speed
75% More customers eligible for online self-service
3x Growth in energy management tool usage
+8 pts Improvement in Forrester CX Index
Restoration speed: Outage management system processing speed improved threefold, with restoration coordination shifting from manual to automated and workflow-driven operations
Scalability and Communication: Scalability expanded from a regional constraint to an enterprise-wide capability, with customer communications now delivered in real time during disruption events
Self-service adoption: 75% more customers became eligible to complete service transactions through the self-service portal without contacting the care center
Internal productivity: Internal team usage of the new energy management tool tripled following deployment
Support call reduction: Billing redesign and expanded self-service options drove a meaningful reduction in avoidable support call volumes
Customer experience: The client's Forrester CX Index score improved by 8 points, reflecting a sustained shift in customer experience quality
Integration architecture: Integration architecture migrated from custom scripts to a standardized API-driven middleware layer, reducing maintenance overhead and improving reliability

HCLTech's techno-functional modernization transformed a fragmented operational environment into an automated, intelligent and customer-focused utility - built to scale and ready for what comes next.