Utility Firms Urged to Extend into Home Service Market

New research published by The Lazarus Partnership today, urges utility companies to move from being energy retailers to home service providers otherwise they “risk being left behind”. The energy retail market has become increasingly complex, seeing reduced demand mixed with increased competition, which is then combined with recurring accusations of profiteering floating around the market. Despite this the penetration of new and emerging technologies such as smart meters, smart thermostats and solar panels continue to offer new opportunity for growth in the home services market.

Technology enables home services to move away from a traditional reactive model, which sees consumers typically waiting for a problem to occur before quickly trying to fix it, to a proactive model of maintaining, monitoring and managing the home. Although it is warned that the window of opportunity may be ‘short lived’ and that the first mover advantage has never been more crucial, as once customers sign up with the services they are usually susceptible to stick and economies of scale may become problematic for new entrants to replicate.

In response to these findings, Mark Coyle, Strategy and Marketing Director at Utiligroup comments: “We welcome the report published by The Lazarus Partnership. We are actively working with device providers, platform partners and our clients to help enable the leading future utilities to capitalise on the opportunities commencing with digitisation of energy through smart metering and the journey towards energy 2.0.”

We welcome contact by clients, partners and those interested in Energy 2.0 to explore how we can enable your market participation, expansion and growth at scale.  Please contact us via Neelam Barber, Marketing Manager at neelam.barber@utiligroup.com to arrange an early conversation with our market strategy team.