Company Profile

This company builds and operates low-carbon energy centres to help energy-intensive businesses make their operations more sustainable. Using the latest energy generation technologies and a novel approach the company has seen significant growth in the number of projects delivered each year.

CEO’s Mission

The CEO sought to enhance their sustainability efforts and energy efficiency for their clients by implementing a unified system for the operation of their energy generation assets. They needed a solution capable of optimising and monitoring different types of generation across a diverse range of assets to enable their business model. They also wanted to explore how AI could be leveraged across the business’s various functions.

Appointing an experienced part-time IT leader (CTO), who worked with the CEO, COO and head of sales, the IT leader supported senior management in exploring new AI initiatives, ensuring the platform roadmap met the business’s future goals, and ensuring technical continuity during the expansion of the business.

CTO’s Objectives

• Develop and oversee the product roadmap

• Collaborate with the CEO on key business areas to enable the company to grow, while controlling IT costs.

• Integrate AI for various use cases, including predictive analytics and LLM-based sales tools.

• Scale the existing solutions to accommodate the growing number of clients.

 

What the IT Leader / CIO Did

Product Roadmap development

The IT Leader assumed the role of CTO, reviewing existing IoT and data platform solutions. They collaborated with the CEO and COO to develop a transformational roadmap that would meet the business’s future needs, enabling it to scale up. The IT leader developed a clear roadmap for staged implementation as the business grew and the various new requirements came online. Foundational to the roadmap was the redesign of the Microsoft Azure data platform, to use best in class services that would both scale beyond the existing platform architecture and have a lower total cost of ownership.

Designed and Implemented transformational AI initiatives

Having recently adopted ChatGPT into the business the CEO recognised the value AI tools could bring to the business and they knew they wanted to expand on their AI usage within the business. The IT leader ran a workshop at the HQ, attended by senior management and the sales team. During the workshop

they explored various functions within the business and how AI could be used in each of those instances. This then led to the development of several use cases – a detailed workup of how AI could be used to solve a particular problem the business faced. Several key AI initiatives were identified and the IT leader oversaw the implementation of these solutions.

Use case 1: AI-enabled sales tool

We identified that a significant amount of time was spent producing initial sales proposals, which required comprehensive data analysis of customers’ energy data. During the workshop, we developed a custom proof of concept ChatGPT assistant tailored to the needs of the sales team. In real-time, we demonstrated how this AI assistant could automate data analysis, quickly providing the sales team with graphs and insights. This prototype was incorporated into a product roadmap, and the IT leader supported the client in fully integrating it into the business’s internal sales portal. The AI-enabled sales tool significantly reduced the time spent on data analysis, allowing the sales team to focus on customer engagement and strategy.

 

Use case 2: Predictive analytics

We identified an opportunity to further increase the efficiency of the energy centres by incorporating predictive analytics into the business operations. Machine learning models were trained on historical data from each energy centre and then deployed to predict upcoming energy usage. These predictive analytics models enabled more efficient control of the energy centres by aligning energy production with anticipated demand.

 

Day-to-day operations

The IT Leader played an integral role in enabling the business to build new energy centres. The IT leader worked closely with the CEO, COO and internal and external engineering teams to ensure the energy centres were built with the correct IT infrastructure in place. This included signing off on P&ID drawings and functional design specifications and working with third parties to specify requirements.

The Results

The IT Leader created a foundation for the business to grow on: –

· Re-architected the existing Microsoft Azure data platform to support future business growth and requirements.

· Reduced future cloud spend by an estimated 30% per year over the next three years, saving the business circa £100,000

· Provided key consultancy in the design and delivery phase for £100m worth of energy centres

· Designed and implemented an AI-driven sales tool, saving the business hundreds of hours of manpower per year

· Identified and action planned how to resolve common issues related to the monitoring and control of the energy centres, helping reduce downtime which cost the business circa £1,000 per hour, per site in lost revenue

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