Guidehouse Insights has ranked Bidgely as a Leader in its most recent 2023 evaluation of Customer Engagement and Experience Analytics providers.
The August 2023 Customer Engagement and Experience leaderboard is the first for Guidehouse Insights, replacing the legacy Home Energy Management Providers Leaderboard with what analysts describe as a broader approach to the topic. Discreet home energy management and behavioral energy efficiency programs have become “yesterday’s news” as “conversations are shifting to more ambitious goals” such as end-to-end program management, smart home optimization, EV management and complex rate analytics.
Bidgely is called out as one of only three CE/CX providers considered by Guidehouse Insights to be in the “Leaders” category among its ranking of 14 customer engagement and experience providers across 10 essential metrics.
“These providers stand out from the competition,” notes Principal Research Analyst Michael Kelly, “because of their technological sophistication, holistic product and use case portfolios, sizable customer bases, and relative geographic reach.”
The Bidgely Advantage
Analysts acknowledge that no one size fits all, and review each provider’s unique differentiators.
In Bidgely’s case, its leaderboard profile highlights the company’s data science leadership as the only vendor offering AI-based, true disaggregation – unlike the static, rudimentary data models (e.g., regression models, physics-based models, statistical analysis) used by other CE/CX vendors.
The report also describes Bidgely’s position as the only vendor that has grown organically from the ground up with in-house developed solutions — a contrast to other leading vendors’ leveraging M&A for growth and technology expansion.
That advantage is evidenced not only by Bidgely’s leadership in traditional CE/CX program delivery, such as Paper HERs, eHERs, consumer web portals and call center tools, but also by its evolution to also leverage customer energy use insights to deliver advanced grid planning and management tools. In fact, the company’s modular business intelligence tool uses appliance disaggregation algorithms to generate behind-the-meter (BTM) insights in support of a wide range of utility applications, including grid analytics, EV analytics, rate design, load research, soft M&V, and DSM targeting & market segmentation.
The Future of CE/CX
Analysts highlight a number of ways in which leading CE/CX analytics providers are continuing to advance the segment. The Leaderboard calls out six future-ready strategies, including the three below:
1) Enterprise-Wide Visibility – Bidgely agrees with Guidehouse Insights’ analysts that consumer energy use data has become the single source of truth that should inform and enhance decision-making across the utility. By applying AI to smart meter data, energy providers can define the foundational building blocks of service territory energy use: the consumption of individual appliances within a home. These appliance-level insight building blocks can then be aggregated to provide actionable intelligence at both the customer-segment and grid-asset-levels -– such as in connection with a specific feeder or substation. This bottom-up approach to grid management enables a deeper understanding of usage and provides insights from which every utility team can benefit.
2) EV Optimization – Customer energy use data empowers in-house data analysts to detect EVs and reveal essential EV insights from within each customer’s total raw energy consumption profile. With the world’s most sophisticated EV disaggregation, Bidgely is able to identify charger types, charger amplitude, typical hours when EV charging happens, if charging is occurring on a schedule, and monthly EV consumption — all with a very low false-negative and false-positive coverage.
With personalized EV analytics for every customer in a service territory, energy providers are able to proactively engage with all new drivers as a trusted advisor, and set them up from the start to optimally manage their EV-related energy usage. Educate drivers about EV rate plans, charging programs, optimal charging equipment and more.
Smart meter EV detection insights also serve as powerful inputs for both real time grid operations and forward-looking infrastructure planning. Utilities are able to see the total charging consumption and EV load by region, zip code, substation or feeder; the percentage of level 1 vs. level 2 chargers; EV load forecasts; percentage of on vs. off-peak charging; specific geographies with the highest charging.
3) DER/DR Program Management – As DER adoption surges, the most dramatic changes to energy supply and demand are taking shape behind the meter, which is why energy use intelligence plays such a critical role.
The most successful demand response programs leverage behind-the-meter energy use data to reveal the unique load profile and load-shifting potential of every customer, segment, grid asset and geographical region. Bidgely’s platform brings together TOU engagement, event-based behavioral demand response and EV load management strategies that leverage behind-the-meter data to empower utilities to value, design, and execute demand response programs successfully. Even as the segment evolves, analysts emphasize that though CE/CX is still a relatively nascent market trend for utilities, market forces are converging to encourage and facilitate more significant customer-centric investment.
To see a walk through Bidgely’s Customer Engagement and Experience solutions, access our demo portal. Or, click here to access the full version of Guidehouse Insights’ Customer Engagement and Experience Leaderboard.