8 Digital Transformation Pitfalls for Energy Brokerages to Avoid

The pandemic has accelerated digital transformation, whether energy brokerages are ready to embrace it or not. For instance, sales reps are now engaging and executing deals via digital tools. Customers are spending more time doing business with companies offering top-notch customer experiences. And many corporations are publicly declaring sustainability goals, yet energy brokerages are not equipped to help them manage these significant undertakings.

Transformation is here to stay, which spells opportunity for energy brokerages. By leveraging today’s technologies and user experiences, you can help your clients fill a traditionally overlooked gap by brokers.

Digital transformation can be exciting, but it can also easily create more problems if it is not done right. Here are eight common pitfalls to avoid throughout your digital transformation journey.

1. Waiting Too Long

Frequently companies wait until something goes wrong to make a significant change in their digital transformation efforts. Waiting too long is a dangerous approach to take. Success stories have one common theme, and that is companies who start proactively and earlier generate significantly more value over three years.

2. The Perfect Trap

There’s never an ideal time to launch a new product or service. Companies typically fall into the perfect trap, where they wait too long for perfection. Today, there is no reason to do so. Cloud-based technologies have made it easier than ever to launch products and services quickly and remain agile while doing so. You can easily improve or dismiss features that do and do not resonate with customers, respectively, far after launch.

3. Ignoring Customer Needs

Every day we hear of more and more companies publicly stating their sustainability goals–and energy plays a key role. These same businesses need a system to monitor and evaluate procurement opportunities. Customers need to manage energy contract renewals aligned to their company’s strategies, whether to meet sustainability goals, budgets, or both.

4. Maximizing Efficiency

The primary goal of digital transformation is to improve the way things are currently done. Whether it is helping a company’s employees become more productive or their customers benefiting from streamlined processes to fulfill their needs.

5. Not Understanding Who their Customers are

Whether it’s Amazon or Netflix, customers are accustomed to getting served up a personalized and digitized experience. These companies have a crystal clear picture of who their customers are and how they can best serve them. Energy brokers need to do the same–primarily to compete against new brokerages that offer enhanced digital experiences.

6. Not Benchmarking Properly

Energy brokers naturally benchmark themselves against other brokers. But when putting yourself in the customers’ shoes, the customers are not comparing you to other brokers. They’re comparing their experience on your digital energy platform against sites they likely visited shortly before yours, such as Amazon and Google.

7. Meeting Customers’ Current Needs and not their Future Needs

It’s relatively easy to understand and meet customers’ needs for today, but what will they want months or years down the line? It’s vital to build for their experience today and tomorrow.

8. Thinking There’s a Finish Line

Much like a company website, the work is never done. Likewise, digital transformation never ends. When a business believes its digital transformation efforts are complete is when it is most susceptible. Always keep moving forward, iterating and improving.

The past two years have been a transformative time for all industries, including the energy industry. Staying ahead of trends and taking steps toward digital transformation will be critical–as long as you avoid some of the most common pitfalls.