Gain a Competitive Advantage by Leveraging Energy Services
Energy is no longer just a fixed cost that your business incurs. By performing energy analytics, invaluable insights can be derived to inform operations, risk management, compliance, manufacturing, among other departments. As a result, organizations should look to incorporate analytics and energy services for businesses that connect usage and cost to the larger picture of business energy management as a competitive advantage.
This shift has occurred largely because of technological progress and corporate sustainability concerns. Energy prices reflect regulation aimed to curb energy consumption that contributes to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, while investors, employees, customers and other stakeholders want organizations to change how they consume energy in order to offer more cost-effective products and services.
In addition to placating these concerns, however, business energy services such as adding analytics capabilities, automation and building retrofits enable companies to improve other areas of their business to become more broadly competitive.
The Analytics Advantage
A business energy service that features energy analytics helps businesses make more data-driven decisions to improve their operations. Doing so is not only simply a trend — it gives companies a clear competitive edge. A study by two researchers from the National Bureau of Economic Research and a University of Pennsylvania professor found that firms using data-driven decision making have 5-6% greater output and productivity than would otherwise be expected.
In addition to getting businesses more comfortable making data-driven decisions, energy analytics feed into many other areas such as customer experience. For example, if an electronics store has high energy costs from customers trying out devices, they can weigh those costs against the benefits of letting customers test electronics. Perhaps the data indicates that it’s a good trade off and that the store should even go further to cater to customers. Or on the other hand, they may need to find an offset, such as highlighting more energy-efficient appliances for customers to try out, rather than showcasing well-known brands.
Businesses also do not have to go at it alone when trying to gain an edge from energy analytics. Energy services companies and consulting firms can help organizations make sense of their data to incorporate it into their larger strategy.
Adding Automation and Increasing Efficiency
In addition to adding analytics, retrofitting buildings to become eco-friendly and incorporating automation devices and systems enables businesses to increase productivity and attract employees, customers and investors.
Energy services companies can perform audits to identify equipment upgrade opportunities and provide financing for those investments to increase energy efficiency. This can include setting a company up to use energy analytics software to work in conjunction with a building automation system. Doing so automates processes such as shutting off certain devices or changing the internal temperature in situations where energy usage and GHG emissions would otherwise peak.
Even if local regulation does not require companies to report GHG emissions data or keep them below a certain level, companies should still be motivated to gain a competitive edge with customers, for instance, who want to support sustainable brands. As EY notes, GHG emissions are “a byproduct that has no value to the company or its customers…In that light, reducing greenhouse gas emissions is an efficiency measure.”
And being more efficient ties into incorporating automation into other areas of your business where you gain a competitive edge, such as by improving customer query response times with automated chatbots. Incorporating this technology can be difficult for non tech-savvy companies, but they can at least get on track by utilizing energy-related automation systems.
So, by utilizing these types of energy services, businesses can go beyond the immediate effects of reduced costs and start to find ways to transform their organizations.
Request a complimentary energy efficiency assessment to find out how Artis Energy’s RTIS® energy analytics platform can provide you with the visibility and insight to transform energy from a fixed cost into a distinct competitive advantage.