Madhya Pradesh Poorv Kshetra Vidyut Vitaran: Creating a Digital Utility of the Future
With its aspiration to be the best electricity supply company in India, MPPKVVCL has ensured that it stays at the forefront of adopting the best-in-class technologies to fuel its digital transformation journey
Digital transformation has taken the world by a storm, especially in the times of the COVID-19 pandemic. In India, as well, along with the private sector, the public sector too has risen to the demand of providing digital services to the citizens. Many government organisations today are adopting best-in-class technologies to ensure they provide the best services to the citizens. And one such organisation who is at the forefront of digitalisation is Madhya Pradesh Poorv Kshetra Vidyut Vitaran Company Ltd. (MPPKVVCL).
MPPKVVCL aspires to be the best electricity supply company in India by continuously enhancing its technological leadership and commercial acumen to satisfy its customers. Their mission is to provide quality electricity supply services to each customer meeting his/her needs most efficiently and effectively at reasonable prices through continuous innovations and by maintaining commercial & financial viability of the company along with employee satisfaction.
Dr. Vivek Chandra, GM & Head IT, MP Poorv Kshetra Vidyut Vitaran Co. Ltd. shares his views and says, “Software developments are being done online using distributed version-control systems like Git. Our tendering process has now been made fully online, including pre-bid meeting and submission of offers. Submission of physical copies of the bid has also been stopped completely. For periodic reviews, virtual meetings are held online using applications like Zoom, Teams and WebEx. And, most of the Material Inspections & testing which earlier required visits to the manufacturer’s facility are now being done online.”
Providing the best in digital
With its mission to provide the best electricity supply services to the people, MPPKVVCL had its goal set when it came to kick-starting its digital transformation journey. According to Dr. Chandra, the main business objectives that MPPKVVCL wanted to achieve with their digital transformation initiatives were first, improvement in customer services and second, Power System Automation.
As per MPPKVVCL’s aim to become more digitised, some of the key solutions that they have adopted include Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Customer Care System, Meter Data Acquisition System (MDAS), Smart Metering, Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA), and Distribution Automation.
Getting the best partners on board
To deliver the best and stay at the top of the digitalisation game, MPPKVVCL made sure that it collaborated and partnered with the best technology partners. The organisation has been a VMware customer, and the partnership has helped them in achieving efficiency and managing scale along with time and cost optimisation. “With the help of VMware solutions, multiple virtual servers for various field offices are now placed in a centralised data centre, which was previously physical servers distributed across multiple remote offices. Due to this virtualised approach, centralised monitoring and management with efficient resource utilisation are accomplished. As of now, more than 70 virtual machines are deployed using four physical servers responsible for billing and Discom’s compute requirement,” shares Dr. Chandra.
Planning for a digital future
The demand for digital technologies has undoubtedly accelerated in the recent past. With the government’s Digital India dream, it has become imperative for organisations to keep enhancing and investing in their digital strategies.
Talking about MPPKVVCL’s next technology adoption plans in terms of improving its digital initiatives, Dr. Chandra shares, “To improve digital initiatives, we are planning to adopt virtualisation technologies for efficient utilisation, cost efficiency and high availability in various ongoing projects like ERP, Billing System, Customer Care System, MDAS, Smart Metering, SCADA, etc. Our company is developing a common Mobile Device Management (MDM) Solution for all the three Discoms in the State. The state is going for Smart Metering in a big way. In these scenarios, we can utilise VMware solutions for efficient resource management and the creation of highly available infrastructure with software-defined networking and security.”
Ensuring success and measuring it
While organisations are on the path to becoming more digital and efficient, it is also essential to assess and measure the success of the initiatives that have been implemented already. It is critical to determine how digital initiatives are providing a better experience to customers and how they are making work more seamless for the organisation. In terms of the success metrics for MPPKVVCL, Dr. Chandra points out, “For a distribution utility like us, quality power supply & customer services are paramount. Hence, the key success metrics for us are Power Quality Indices like System Average Interruption Frequency Index (SAIFI), System Average Interruption Duration Index (SAIDI) & Momentary Average Interruption Frequency Index (MAIFI); Revenue Indices like Billing Efficiency, CRPU & Aggregate Technical and Commercial (AT&C) Loss, etc.; and Consumer Services Indices like Average Handling Time (AHT) of Complaints, Customer Satisfaction level, etc. We measure the impact of digital initiatives on the above indices. It helps us in assessing where we are, plan for our future and ultimately, achieve our goal to be the best electricity supply company in India.”
