IDC interviews Kraken clients to chart the future of utility operations

IDC has spoken to leaders at EDF UK, E.ON Next and Ergon to understand how they’re escaping the constraints of legacy tech systems to meet the developing demands of the energy transition.

“We transitioned close to six million customers from a highly complex, decades-old legacy estate. Kraken’s API-driven architecture, disciplined migration approach, and close collaboration between business and technology teams allowed us to manage that complexity, maintain service quality, and establish a far more resilient foundation for future innovation.”
Lee Durham, Director of Digital Technology, EON Next

IDC’s report, Transforming Utility Operations for an Affordable and Inclusive Energy Transition, identifies three critical areas of focus for operations:

• Lowering cost to serve
• Accelerating innovation and adaptation
• Making the energy transition more accessible, equitable and scalable.

Pressure is mounting as energy systems grow more complex, Domestic Energy Resource (DER) adoption speeds up, and affordability becomes a structural constraint.

IDC finds that: ‘Many utilities are trying to respond using legacy IT and operational systems built for a simpler, linear energy model.’ This makes it harder to maintain a real-time view of operations, roll out innovative products and respond effectively to changing conditions – ultimately raising costs and increasing pressures further.

But there is a solution: ‘to succeed, utilities must modernize their digital foundations’ to stay on top of rapid industry change and support innovation at scale.

Lowering cost to serve

As prices become more volatile and customer expectations climb, utilities need new ways to manage more complex accounts and products that don’t pile on additional operating costs.

IDC finds that scalable automation and effective self-service journeys can remove much of this friction. ‘A unified, real-time data model unlocks efficiencies by enabling analytics and AI to automate routine work, improve decision-making, and surface actionable insights.’

Centralising systems and data also offers more efficient ways of serving customers, like a universal agent model. Giving each team member a full view of customer accounts – and the tools to resolve issues from beginning to end – delivers shorter resolution times, a more productive workforce and a lower cost to serve (not to mention happier customers).

“We’ve moved from siloed call centers to integrated customer-operations hubs, supported by AI tools like Kraken’s Magic Ink and a universal-agent model. This shift has reduced handling times, improved consistency, and strengthened overall customer satisfaction while ensuring every dollar delivers value.”
Damien Lynch, General Manager Customer and Business Enablement, Ergon Energy Retail

Accelerating innovation and adaptation

DERs like solar panels, batteries, EVs and heat pumps can lower bills, strengthen energy security and unlock valuable flexibility for the grid – as well as creating new revenue streams for utilities. But catering for energy prosumers also introduces greater complexity for operations teams.

Utilities need to be able to rapidly build and manage the kinds of products that can connect, manage, and optimize DERs, and invite customers to share the benefits. The report explains: ‘As complexity grows across products and customer segments, utilities need more than a unified data model and an API-first core; they need purpose-built pricing tools that enable fast configuration without heavy development, combined with an operating model that supports rapid testing and controlled roll-out.’

In other words, supporting electrification, flexibility and asset-based services requires operations teams to navigate advanced pricing models, and manage greater variation across customer segments, regions and use cases.

Once again, IDC finds that platforms like Kraken provide the foundation for this approach, ensuring ‘consistent pricing logic, validation, and execution across channels and systems.’

“Post-migration, we’ve been able to launch and test new tariffs far more quickly. Kraken’s flexible billing and unified data model give us the agility we simply didn’t have before.”
Senior Executive, Director of Retail, EDF

Making the energy transition more accessible, equitable and scalable

IDC writes that if the energy transition is to reach its full potential, utilities need to identify, engage and support a wide range of customers. This means empowering utility operations to move towards engagement that is more targeted, responsive and data-informed.

“Having everything in a single data model allows us to understand customer needs before they tell us. Kraken enables us to anticipate issues, personalize support, and use AI more intelligently across our operations, which is essential as energy journeys become more complex.”
Lee Durham, Director of Digital Technology, EON Next

The potential for unified platforms to connect customers to the benefits of DER orchestration and flexibility can expand adoption, making DERs more affordable and more accessible through innovative products and tariffs.

These new customer experiences don’t have to come at the expense of great service. In IDC’s words, ‘A flexible, modular operating foundation supports the continuous introduction, refinement, and scaling of these journeys. The result is more personalized and reliable clean-energy experiences, without higher service costs or added customer friction.’

Upgraded operations are critical for a successful energy transition

IDC’s report highlights that lowering cost to serve, accelerating innovation and widening participation in the energy transition are not separate challenges. Each depends on utilities having modern digital capabilities that empower operations teams to handle increasingly complex products, assets and customer journeys quickly and efficiently.

By replacing fragmented legacy systems with unified platforms like Kraken, utilities can relieve today’s operational pressures while gaining the agility to develop new products, serve a broader range of customers and adapt as the energy system evolves.