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Revolutionizing energy management: Using AI to drive innovation and enhance operational efficiency
By Katrina Redmond, Executive Vice President and CIO, Eaton
Over the past year, we’ve integrated AI across our organization, revolutionizing our approach to intelligent power management and making significant progress in our mission to solve the world’s energy challenges. By leveraging tools like Microsoft 365 Copilot and Microsoft Azure, we have optimized operations like supply chain management and on-time delivery, while empowering superior customer experiences through automation and predictive analytics.
With AI, Eaton is harnessing the speed and flexibility needed to create scalable solutions that empower employees, enhance customer outcomes and support a more sustainable future.
While AI models have been around for some time, generative AI, like ChatGPT, has revolutionized data analysis by enabling us to process vast amounts of information, provide context and generate actionable insights and predictions in ways previously unimaginable.
Our integration of Microsoft Copilot demonstrates how generative AI is helping transform Eaton by enhancing operational efficiency. We’ve recently accelerated training across the organization, putting powerful tools at the fingertips of our employees. By streamlining tasks like managing calendars, crafting engaging emails and providing faster access to data, Copilot boosts our productivity. It also enables us to record and transcribe conversations, analyze follow-ups and collaborate more effectively across teams.
Beyond day-to-day tasks, Microsoft 365 Copilot's specialized agents bring functional expertise to areas like finance, sales and HR, handling repetitive, mundane tasks and freeing our teams to focus on higher-value, strategic work that enables us to better serve our customers.
Now we’re extending the value of Microsoft 365 Copilot and Microsoft Copilot for Service into technical support. By feeding internal catalogs and documents data into Copilot, our frontline customer service teams can quickly access the information they need to address product issues or provide application insights for customers. While still in the early stages, we’re seeing promising results and are excited to co-develop this powerful, game-changing tool with Microsoft to enhance customer support and deliver exceptional service.
One of our key challenges internally is ensuring we have the quality of data necessary to mine insights, enhance predictability and drive meaningful improvements across operations. Microsoft Azure has played a crucial role in addressing data gaps and reinforcing governance. It facilitates seamless data integration and substantially improves the speed, resilience and agility required to access information and expedite time-to-value.
For example, our customer service centers now have access to richer, more comprehensive customer data, enabling faster, more effective responses and improved outcomes.
The rapid evolution of AI, combined with advancements in data accessibility, is unlocking unprecedented opportunities for Eaton. AI offers limitless potential for innovation, providing transformative technical opportunities that align with our growth objectives and advance our mission for sustainability and energy resilience by supporting grid flexibility, enhancing energy management, and delivering superior service and outcomes for our customers.
The next 12 months will be pivotal as we build on the strong foundation we’ve established and operationalize our use cases for scalability. By embedding AI into our culture and adopting a “think AI first” mindset, we aim to drive further advancements in both technology and organizational strategy. Our collaboration with Microsoft will remain essential as we continue to pilot, learn and evolve. This ensures that we can fully harness AI's immediate potential while fostering sustained innovation across all aspects of our business.
Katrina R. Redmond is senior vice president and chief information officer for Eaton, a global power management company. In this role, Katrina is responsible for the enterprise information technology strategy and execution. She joined Eaton in 2021. Prior to Eaton, Katrina worked for Hubbell, where she served as vice president and CIO. Throughout her career, she has guided digital transformations and global e-commerce solutions, and delivered global enterprise system implementations. She has held IT leadership roles at ABB, GE Grid Solutions, GE Industrial Solutions and GE Plastics. Katrina received a Bachelor of Science degree in biology and psychology from the University of Georgia. She later received a Master of Science degree in industrial engineering from the Southern Polytechnic State University. Katrina has served on the GE Women in Technology Board and received a CIO 100 Award in 2013.
