Origin Energy has chosen its preferred cloud provider to deliver its digital transformation plan and improve customer experience.
The energy provider selected Amazon Web Services (AWS) to spearhead its digitisation.
As Australia’s largest integrated energy retailer and generator, Origin is increasingly looking to digitisation to allow customers to seamlessly manage their energy in the home.
Origin has migrated more than 60 per cent of its workloads to AWS, covering the majority of its critical workloads including billing and customer care, energy trading, operations management, and its enterprise data lake.
This migration marks a major step towards Origin’s goal of operating 100 per cent in the cloud and closing all primary data centres by 2021.
Origin uses a full suite of AWS services, including data analytics, machine learning (ML), business productivity applications, compute, security, storage, and databases, to access greater insights, drive operational efficiency, and help deliver new services.
Since 2016, Origin has worked with AWS to launch new services to improve and simplify the customer experience, enabling customers to track their usage, manage bills and payments, and connect with customer service agents via the company’s website and mobile app.
The rollout of Origin’s new retail operating model with United Kingdom energy technology group, Octopus Energy, using its customer platform Kraken, is expected to help the company further improve customer service and reduce operating costs, and will also run on AWS.
Origin hopes to leverage AWS to operate its core business more efficiently, reducing billing processing times by 30 per cent, improving operational report run times by 84 per cent, and reducing the cost of running technology infrastructure by 50 per cent.
Origin trades electricity and gas with software built on AWS using serverless technology to provide the scale and reliability required for real-time spot markets to match the supply of electricity from power stations with consumption by households and businesses.
This complements a recent migration of the company’s asset intelligence suite which collects data from Origin’s generation facilities, such as natural gas, solar, and wind power stations, to allow their support centre teams to use predictive analytics to identify potential maintenance or operational disruptions and run the assets remotely and securely from the cloud.
Origin is also working with AWS and other technology providers to deliver a Cloud Academy training and enablement program designed to provide employees with the skills needed to innovate with cloud and ML technologies.
Origin will provide access to training for more than 500 employees, and aims to certify more than 100 by July 2020.
Through the Cloud Academy, employees will develop the skills needed to implement cloud technologies at scale, make better data-driven business decisions, and innovate new services to drive improved outcomes for consumers.
Group Manager for Cloud and Infrastructure for Origin, Nick Andrews, said that as the sector continues to transition towards cleaner and smarter energy solutions for customers, the importance of technology to improve operational processes would only grow.
“AWS provides us with access to the latest and best technology that helps us to accelerate our digital transformation and supports us to give our customers what they want, when they want it. Our focus on embracing digitalisation and innovation has led to a significant improvement in the functionality of our digital platforms and how our customers use them,” Mr Andrews said.
Director of Enterprise for AWS in Australia and New Zealand, Karl Durrance, said AWS was committed to helping Origin leverage technologies such as data analytics and machine learning to digitise their operations and provide a better experience for customers.
“Cloud skills play an increasingly important role in the workforce and Origin’s Cloud Academy program will not only provide a foundation that will accelerate the company’s own digital transformation, but help employees enhance their overall career potential,” Mr Durrance said.
