Fully Leveraging an Electric Utility's Data Assets

Overview

Our client is a subsidiary utility to one of the largest producers of electricity in the United States with more than 2.4 million customers. They had a need to align data governance strategies across business units to support a unified architecture / infrastructure that could leverage the company’s assets fully without redundancy.

The utility had begun developing a multi-year roadmap, but it was not inclusive of all organizational business units that provided required data, presenting critical reporting challenges resulting from a lack of proper data governance alignment.

These challenges stemmed from uncleansed and duplicate data, along with undefined ownership for key processes and data elements, and a highly decentralized system of tools and software.

This resulted in an inability to create portfolio-level reporting on their capital projects, resulting in delays to executive reporting requests and strategic decision-making.

Our Approach

PFES kicked off an 8-week data management assessment, utilizing experts from our Data & Analytics and Management Consulting practices to provide a holistic and well-rounded recommendation for a data hierarchy, governance model, and governance tools that would address their short and long-term data challenges.

PFES conducted over 40 key stakeholder interviews across the client’s business to understand and document the current state of the client’s data architecture and key business processes.

In addition to client interviews, PFES also completed various exercises such as data profiling, data mapping, data quality assessments, and more to gain a comprehensive understanding of the data that would allow for detailed recommendations for the client.

Outcome

Throughout the data management assessment, PFES worked closely with the client to deliver a comprehensive recommendations package addressing their short-term challenges and positioning them for future success on their data strategy roadmap.

PFES made recommendations aligning with data governance best practices that would provide benefits such as clear data domain ownership, data cleanup, data quality, and more nimble reporting capabilities, allowing for greater strategic decision making.

Additionally, PFES proposed implementation of a new data hierarchy that would provide a streamlined aggregation method for executive reporting, reducing time spent on previously manual processes by 50%.

Overall, PFES partnered with the client to execute a short-term data management assessment that resulted in quick wins for their organization and continued progress toward their long-term vision for a comprehensive data strategy.

The client has engaged PFES for implementing this scope of work in business intelligence, process improvement, document controls, change management and governance.

The Perfect Power Delivery Consulting Partner

Our team consists of industry heavyweights that bring substantial expertise to the table for our clients. We partner with you to reduce risk and uncertainty in your capital projects, delivering initiatives on time with significant cost savings while meeting industry and safety standards. Contact us today to find out how we can help.