Accenture
Miki Deric is Managing Director at Accenture.
PUF's Steve Mitnick: What's the main point of this year's conference hosted by Accenture?
Miki Deric: There's a lot of innovation happening across the industry. What we wanted to do is create an environment where our clients and Accenture's thought leaders can freely exchange ideas — a place where utilities can learn from us and each other about how they can take advantage of new ideas and practice innovation.
When you think about the landscape going forward, a lot of the progress is going to be played out in the technology space, an area that can unlock value. Concepts we talked about three or four years ago have become everyday news. For example, the cost of sensors is so low that some of the companies are deploying them in large numbers just to capture as much information as possible. In addition to technology-driven devices and equipment, the innovation is also coming from information systems and the ability to process large amounts of information and make real-time decisions with very little human intervention.
PUF: There's so much data. It can overwhelm companies. Maybe no one person can understand what's going on.