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business processes reliably – specifically in terms of their international diversity. KISTERS can benefit today from many years of experience in designing and developing energy data management systems, since our systems have always been a central data conversion hub between the various business applications. As we have learned from our initial extensive rollouts for smart meter projects, this is where the decision is made in terms of system reliability for the support of business processes and whether or not an energy supplier has a future-proof market position based on an efficient meter data management system. The basic requirements here are high-quality components – like the ones KISTERS has been developing and successfully deploying in the energy sector for years. BH. Obviously that is very important, otherwise things will become overly expensive very quickly. Standardisation issues are also becoming important – and I think they should be driven with more enthusiasm. Without standardisation, you have no proper competition and
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Bo Harald is Head of the Executive Advisors Unit at TietoEnator. His aim is to concentrate on consulting and advising on services for the digitalisation of business operations. Harald previously worked for 30 years in the world of banking, with particular focus on e-banking with the Union Bank of Finland. He continues to specialise in e-habits created in banking with TietoEnator.
without proper competition, you don’t achieve any real progress. I would say that this should be an ambition for companies as it will be very difficult to get a fast payback without reliable and cost-effective components. Again, that will not prevail if standardisation isn’t present. If you look at standardisation in the area of electronic invoicing, which is what I specialise in, I can certainly see a huge leap forward this year. If I judge from here that we’ve been taken aback by our levels of progress, why shouldn’t it also happen in areas such as meter reading? It’s probably going down the same road but will take a bit longer because there are some hardware aspects here that obviously need to be worked on. The all-important aspect for the industry is to look at what we’re doing with our customers. The aim is to cut administrative costs in half – that can be done by moving to electronic invoicing. On the back of it, you can automate accounting, processes, cash estimates; pretty much anything. It would be really important for the utilities world to commit themselves to this for the good of society at large.
01/09/2010 14:37