Business Transformation & Operational Excellence Insights

Duke Energy's 2020 AWARD FINALIST CASE STUDY : Operational Excellence Outstanding Leader of the Year Award

Written by BTOES Insights Official | Jun 27, 2020 11:30:00 AM

Read this article about Duke Energy, Operational Excellence Outstanding Leader of the Year Award, selected by the independent judging panel, for the 2020 Business Transformation & Operational Excellence Industry Awards program.

Duke Energy is creating a smarter energy future for the people and communities they serve. Duke Energy is transforming to advance their long-term strategy to modernize the energy grid, generate cleaner energy, expand natural gas infrastructure, engage stakeholders in new ways and, ultimately, revamp the customer experience. New technologies and maturing digital tools have enabled new opportunities to meet ever-increasing customer and employee expectations. They refreshed their strategy, embedding operational excellence and business transformation as foundational enablers to deliver on their commitments to their customers, investors and employees.

This work has been led by Brian Savoy, SVP and Chief Transformation and Administrative Officer, whose singular vision is captured in this challenge that he poses to the company: “If you put aside everything you know about our business and designed the future Duke Energy, what would you do?” 

Savoy has been a visionary leader, challenging the organization to envision and prepare for a future in which Duke Energy continues to thrive. He has activated Duke Energy’s most powerful transformation to date and has been a transformational voice at the executive leadership level, articulating the realities of the changing world, such as flat load growth, increasing customer and employee expectations, and the potential for industry-wide disruption through new technologies.

That question has sparked an internal revolution in what they do and how they do it. It led to the creation and implementation of Lighthouse, Duke Energy’s enterprise-wide digital transformation program, so named because it aims to steer them away from the shoals of dangerous business risk toward a safer, technology-enabled future. Lighthouse strives to create and enable digital technologies to increase operational efficiencies for their frontline employees and resulting in better service to their customers. Since its launch in 2018, Lighthouse became one of the fastest transformations Duke Energy has ever experienced – and one in which peer utilities are benchmarking against. They delivered 20 products in one year, engaging more than 500 employees from IT and the business to co-create, and opened the doors to a new innovation center.

Transforming for the future is a key Leadership Imperative identified by Duke Energy CEO, Lynn Good, in 2016. Leadership imperatives provide Duke Energy’s employees with a framework to know what qualities they all need to use to ensure Duke Energy continues to lead into the future. Brian Savoy was not only the visionary behind this specific imperative, but also the executive tasked to lead transformation.

Brian empowered his team to lead the development and testing of an innovation model – the Digital Operating Model with four key elements: 

  • Leadership support and alignment to include all operating business units in their digital transformation – Organizational alignment around objectives and results
  • Building an Agile team for each digital product: Every digital product has a dedicated co-located/cross-functional team with business and IT representation
  • Funding teams incrementally (i.e. Metered Funding): Funds are provided to carry a team’s effort through an eight-week window. After which, the teams submit their Business Outcome Summary highlighting key results and identifying their future funding need
  • Ensuring human-centric design is carried thoroughly throughout the design, implementation and deployment phases: All pain points are refined during workshops with user empathy maps and other tools to ensure they are building the right product

Brian has focused the digital transformation at Duke Energy on the people, knowing that it’s not the company that is transforming, but rather the people. Through his visionary leadership, Lighthouse has put the company on track toward becoming one of the world’s first truly digital utilities.

About the Awards

The Business Transformation & Operational Excellence Awards have been established to showcase globally the most outstanding organizational achievements through the application of Operational Excellence programs. Click here to view the Press Release.

The winners will be announced at the Awards Ceremony at The Business Transformation & Operational Excellence World Awards (BTOES) on Wednesday, March 25th, 2020, from 6.30pm in the Venetian Ballroom at the Loews Portofino Bay Hotel at Universal Orlando Resort.

The Business Transformation & Operational Excellence Awards are open to all organizations, both private and public sector, across the globe, which have implemented Operational Excellence programs to deliver outstanding business results.

The Awards will be held in conjunction with the Business Transformation & Operational Excellence World Summit, BTOES 2020 in the beautiful Venetian Ballroom on March 25, 2020 at the Loews Portofino Bay Hotel at Universal Orlando™️. Click to access the agenda, view the current speakers, and watch the highlights video from last year.

 

BTOES.com

The issues in this article are just one of topic areas that are going to be discussed at the Business Transformation & Operational Excellence World Summit & Industry

BTOES is the industry’s biggest and best, senior-level, cross-industry gathering of Business Transformation & Operational Excellence industry leaders and senior executives.

It also hosts the Business Transformation & Operational Excellence Awardswhich showcase globally the most outstanding organizational achievements through the application of Operational Excellence programs.

The summits hosts a number of private forums for C-Level & Global corporate-level leaders as well as business unit heads.

With over 150 speakers, over 100 sessions, 12 Keynotes, 9 Track Themes, 5 parallel tracks, 60+ track sessions, 50 roundtable discussions, 20 Interactive Workshops, 6 Thought Leader Panels, 5 Leaders Boardrooms, 5 co-located events, the Industry Awards Program, Site Visits, 20+ hours of social networking including 2 gala cocktail parties, dinners, numerous group activities, this is the ultimate event to benchmark, network and drive Operational Excellence to the next level.

 

Quick Links

Speakers

Agenda

BTOES Awards

 

There is a strong focus on Cultural Transformation, Customer Delight, Sustaining an Operational Excellence program, Need for end-to-end Business Transformation, Keeping up with new technologies/impact of digitalization and Leadership Buy-in & Understanding. We dedicated two tracks to advanced technologies, such as AI, Machine Learning, RPA, Predictive Analytics, Blockchain, Cloud infrastructure etc.

The agenda is designed to encourage active meaningful conversations though all day enhanced networking and interaction opportunities, including

  • All-day Refreshment & Themed Breaks

  • 1¼ Hour Hot Breakfast Networking Sessions

  • 1½ Hour Hot Plated Networking Lunches with Topic & Industry Sector focussed tables

  • 1½ Hour Roundtable Sessions by Topic & Industry Sector.

  • Keynote & Themes Panel Sessions

  • Hosted Welcome Receptions from 5.30pm

  • Expanded more lavish Awards Program

  • Newly launched Night Summit for attendees to meet after dinner

For more information or to discuss the summit in more detail please schedule a call below,

Click here to schedule a call.