Alva Launches In Sight for Energy & Utilities

A daily industry report analysing the news and social media for the latest emerging reputational issues, risks and opportunities.

Alva launched In Sight Energy & Utilities, a sector-based report drawn from traditional and social media. Delivered daily and weekly on a subscription basis, the service provides organisations in the Energy & Utilities industry with an analysis of emerging reputational risk issues.

Designed for Board-level executives, corporate communications directors and frontline business departments, the latest Alva In Sight analysis shows that Renewable Energy dominated traditional and social media discussion over the past month with 23% of all Energy and Utilities talk on the issue. With the oil industry facing a substantial reputation spillover effect from the BP Deepwater disaster and the new UK coalition government outwardly supportive of renewables, coverage of all forms of renewable power is likely to increase substantially in the coming weeks. Infrastructure issues (12%) are closely linked with renewable issues and as such are likely to yield a large share of coverage largely thanks to the divisive nature of wind turbine installations and government policy on the future of the UK’s ailing nuclear reactors. Corporate news (16%) focused on the soaring profits for gas companies as a result of the cold winter as well as ongoing concerns over billing transparency, with consumer dissent increasing via social media channels. This will help boost consumer readiness for smart meters, but the issue itself is likely to be pushed off the media agenda, particularly as its seasonal boost has passed.

Commenting on the new service, Alberto Lopez, CEO and founder of Alva, said: “In the current regulatory and economic environment, the UK Energy & Utilities sector is increasingly under close scrutiny from a multitude of stakeholders. Now is the perfect time to launch our In Sight service, a service to ensure business decision-makers and frontline staff can stay on top of emerging reputational issues and spot potential risks and opportunities as they happen.”

Following Alva’s launch of In Sight Automotive in May 2010, Energy & Utilities is the second In Sight service from the corporate reputation and risk analysis firm. Services are planned for 32 industry sectors in total.

In addition, Alva will provide a range of complementary services designed to allow organisations to build reputational risk assessment and analysis into their day-to day business processes to ensure reputation is managed in the same way as any other business asset. These services will include a near real-time dashboard to analyse an organisation’s reputation, bespoke reputational research and consultancy, as well as sector-specific forums for professional development and networking.

For the latest updates on emerging Energy and Utilities issues follow Alva on Twitter @AlvaUtilities