After ten years of huge changes on the energy markets in Europe, mainly due to deregulation, the former domestic and monopolistic operators are coping with totally new strategic issues. Major investments in production needs, carbon management, sustainability, renewable energies, grid interconnections, energy efficiency, smart grids; energy has become one of the most exciting areas for innovation, development and internationalization. For all players, big or small, former monopolies or young start-ups, it is a field of threat and opportunity.
Despite the shortage of primary energies, there are several worldwide leaders in Europe (oil, gas, electricity). Due to the deregulation process, they are all facing huge transformations: adapt the governance to face internationalization of the markets; define strategic road maps especially on post-merger integrations; define new strategies in the field of sustainability and innovation; transform the organizations and the key process in order to become more flexible, more efficient through new « lean » approaches of operational performance.
In this new competition, they have to increase the operational efficiency of distribution, sales and marketing process, by reducing lost times in the value chain in back offices, customer services centers, with a constant link with the customer strategy (new services, customer satisfaction, limited time to market), and to rationalize the support functions such as real estate, procurement, IT, HR.
Because of the lack of capacities at European scale, the big players also have to manage the necessary big investment programs in production (nuclear, thermal, hydraulic new build programs), distribution (smart metering / smart grids), transportation (interconnections) and marketing & sales (web channel, new services).
Facing new rules on new markets, teams have to change their behavior through a clear vision of the main changes and strong investments in training.
More recently, the big operators faced brand new challenges to build competitive advantage: to cope with the Third Package (3*20), they have to offer now new services (energy efficiency, energy management systems, infrastructures for e-mobility, etc) based on new technologies. Then, R&D is becoming a key issue at European level to increase the global efficiency of our champions on the international markets.
At EUROGROUP CONSULTING we help the major players in Europe to understand the signification of those evolutions, clarify the complexity, and enable the managers to make decisions based on true priorities.