Electrica intends to move towards the multi-utilities concept and in the coming weeks it will obtain the gas supply license, said Cătălin Stancu, general manager of the company.
“We are thinking of more options. If you are sitting in one type of commoditiy, while you’re performing good, it’s great. The problem is that you have no other options and it is risky to play in only one sector (electricity distribution – e.n.). Clearly we also need to do this as quickly as possible. We should have the gas supply license in the coming weeks and actually get into the gas supply business. We should go to the multi-utility concept”, said Stancu, quoted by Agerpres. According to him, what you buy (in the utilities industry) is “comfort” and digitization is very important because it reduces the cost of serving the customer.
Dan Cătălin Stancu, Electrica: We want to sell comfort, not just electricity (energynomics.ro Magazine, March 2017)
“Basically you buy comfort. Another thing that usually bothers the customer is that you have three or more invoices, you do not understand the invoice, you cannot enter on a website to ask a question or to get the information you need. If you succeed in giving the customer all the information he needs in real time, that means digitization. […] And we need to enter more aggressively in the area of digitization in relation to the client. The digitization reduces the cost of serving the client and in addition it also gives him the advantage that he can decide how and when to make a payment, to understand the invoice, to buy a new product or even to change his supplier”, said the Electrica manager.
He added that the group is also considering other products, such as energy audit or using more advanced technologies.
“The products we are going to try out this year, beyond gas and electricity, can take more sophisticated forms. You cannot ignore a market trend, even if, let’s say, we entered an area later. If everybody is doing it and you do not do it, then you are condemned to lose customers. We are clearly thinking about entering into the concept of multi-utilities, which means gas, electricity, maybe telecom, maybe water, maybe heat. Let’s speak mote about it at the end of the year”, said Stancu.
In his view, “a winning concept” would be the thermal megawatt.
“If you think that tomorrow you have a position in which, let’s say, you sell gas to tens of thousands of customers… The customers do not need gas, they need heat, that is comfort. A winning concept is to sell to the customer a thermal MWh. And you make a subscription with a customer, that in each month you pay for it let’s say X lei for a thermal MWh and you are not interested in anything else (for example: to find the heat power plant that suits your needs, to buy gas, to make a revision agreement or make a repair). You provide what is known as ‚product as the service’. You offer a thermal MWh at a competitive price and a high service quality level with the hope that you will have satisfied customers who could stay with you for life”, explained Stancu.
The power distribution companies within the Electrica Group cover over 40% of Romania’s territory, with an operating area of approximately 100.000 square kilometers. The three companies within the Electrica Group serve over 3,6 million consumers in 18 counties in the Muntenia North, Transylvania South and Transylvania North areas.