Adriana Karaboutis is taking her own path to digitalizing National Grid.
As Group Chief Information and Digital Officer (CIDO) of the London-based electricity and gas utility, Karaboutis has developed a targeted strategy to invest in cutting-edge technologies, rethinking the way a utility can interact with it and service its customers Improve and rethink how IT can work with the business to deliver results. All for an industry that both strives for change and deals with the change that is forced upon it.
“In the utility sector, we are now prosumers and consumers,” said Karaboutis, who joined National Grid as CIDO in 2017. “You have multiple sources, where before you had machine-harvested energy, now you have weather-harvested energy and you.” “We’re available to the weather for wind and solar versus coal and fossil fuels.”
This question and answer session features Karaboutis, an IT veteran with more than 25 years of experience and current panelist MIT Sloan CIO Symposiumtalks about her role as CIDO, her strategy to digitize National Grid, her biggest technology challenge and the role of IT lead for internal sustainability initiatives.
You act as the main information and information officer digital officer, which seems like an intentional merging of two previously separate roles. How does being a CIDO differ from being a traditional IT boss?
Adriana Karaboutis
Adriana Karaboutis: I took on this position at National Grid and that was one of the reasons I was so interested in the position because the board and the CEO recognized that the digitalization of the company and IT goes hand in hand.
The way I have defined digital at National Grid consists of three key areas: leveraging cutting-edge technologies; Reimagining the future and operating models, customer retention, etc.; [and] Establishing a different way of delivery, which for me was an agile way of working and a product operating model.
I said exactly what digitalization That is because people confuse it – some think it is digital branding and marketing, believe it or not. Others think it’s about customer retention and activation. And that’s all for us. But if you give it three keys, it suddenly comes to life and crystallizes.
How is your team structured?
Karaboutis: I have a Chief Product Officer who ensures we deliver systems or features Product operating model. We have product owners in the company who are responsible for certain results – not outputs, but results. I have CIDOs for each of our jurisdictions, or what you would think of as divisional CIOs – they are divisional CIDOs. They are responsible for everything that is waterfall or traditional information processing, as well as for the digitization of their part of the company – their department – and work hand in hand with the company. And here’s the big difference; You can’t tell the technology people from the business people who are reimagining the future. They are an integral part of these product operations teams that deliver the results we need.
You mentioned both Waterfall and agile methods or strategies. How do you bring the two together?
Karaboutis: I gave my team a very big challenge. In each department, I asked the team, the leaders, to recognize when they are going to move to waterfall or digital operations – or to understand when they know the outcome and whether they only need to do the minimum viable products and alpha and Beta releases because they develop the product over time – and then communicate with the company via digital methods.
What I’m saying now is that CIDOs need to understand when it’s traditional automation or a disruptive change.
Adriana KaraboutisCIDO group, National Grid
We have always said that good IT people must understand the business. What I’m saying now is that CIDOs need to understand when it’s traditional automation and when it’s a disruptive change.
What are frontier technologies at National Grid?
Karaboutis: The other big change is that we’re thinking about platforms, be they technology platforms or product platforms. And we operate on platforms to move forward quickly. So, frontier technologies, what I just said, are part of it.
Also artificial intelligence, machine learning, cloud, 5G, edge computing – this is very important to us because when you think about all the assets in the field and where you are and those who are calling home, enormous amounts of calculation are required, to understand where [the fattest] your grid is. I could also use blockchain there and the result of a lot of these things, which is digital twins, so that we can predict our demand planning models for energy using digital twins that serve as a proxy for what’s going on in the real grid.
How has AI specifically changed your company?
Karaboutis: AI plays a big role internally in our efficiency in running our business, in customer preferences and the ability to predict them, and in the assets that run our network – predictive versus prescriptive.
How has the COVID-19 pandemic changed your company and what changes will remain in the future?
Karaboutis: Like other companies, we took the victory lap. We all got up very quickly. Microsoft 365 helped from a tools perspective. We introduced Microsoft Teams and got the company running very well. Our cNPS [colleague net promoter score] doubled by what we did and how we set people up – recognizing the different personas like call desks and help desks and things like that. These things remain now.
What was it like for you to lead a remote team?
Karaboutis: The secret for me is clarity about results and valuing and rewarding results – not activity [or] Meeting and issue. We are very specific about what we want to achieve and communicate frequently – and that doesn’t mean frequent meetings – about OKRs or goals and key results that we have adopted into our product operating model. I think we’ve been clearer and more transparent than ever before because of COVID.
What is your biggest technical challenge and are you addressing it?
Karaboutis: My biggest technical challenge is the install base of legacy technology, and I would say that most large companies face this challenge. What we’ve done is we haven’t taken the approach of updating everything, but rather bringing it to modern platforms.
We said we need to get by, stay within our cybersecurity technical debt, but collect APIs – we use Snowflake to pull data and store it in one [data] See and use it; We use data where it rests. We live with outdated technology as it renews itself, so we don’t move on, manana, manana, manana, to get the value of what we need. But the challenge still remains: When do you harvest, when do you rebuild – when do you simply retire?
The most important thing for me is how we get the results we need despite the aging infrastructure.
I wanted to talk briefly about sustainability initiatives, and this is trending National Grid’s roadmap. What role does the CIDO play in sustainability initiatives?
Karaboutis: Where we play and where I think we can play depends on measurement. Many companies will find that they don’t have good measures in place to measure their overall carbon footprint three areas [of emissions]. I think IT will play a key role not only in reducing our own footprint, but also in really helping companies measure and measure as we move forward with our plans – whether we to reach.
We have seen the SAP position ERP as the heart of sustainability data and develop tools to measure things like CO2 emissions. Are you bringing technology into your business to measure sustainability?
Karaboutis: At the moment we are thinking about what is best. On the one hand it’s about building and on the other hand it’s about buying. As you said, SAP is at the top and you have some other companies that have great modules. I just spoke to Microsoft yesterday and they have some key features that they would like to bring in to help us with this. So it’s a bit like the cloud – it’s build and buy.
Editor’s note: This Q&A has been edited for brevity and clarity.
