Connected Data for Today’s Utility: From Health to Capital Planning

In the world of high-intensity asset management in the utilities industry, the distance between a field engineer’s observation for capital investment and a CFO’s actual allocation of those funds is often measured in months, millions of dollars, and hundreds of manual spreadsheets.

As the utilities industry continues to grapple with the challenge of modernizing the grid with shifting resources, the distance between turning an observation into a funded project can serve as a critical blind spot for the future of the organization and its infrastructure.

The Invisible Friction: Trapped Data and Manual Gaps

Recent data shows that reliability continues to be a key driver of capital plans for utilities. With organizations planning to spend $1.4 trillion in CapEx over the next five years, there’s a clear need for utilities to move beyond the manual gaps that exist today.

For many utilities organizations, system health data for its infrastructure often serves as a lagging indicator. Since this health data traditionally lives in a vacuum – either via disparate systems, as institutional knowledge, or in spreadsheets – it’s disconnected from the systems that are used to inform multi-million-dollar capital planning processes.

This disconnection does more than create challenges for getting real time data on system health. It can create distinct areas of risk, including:

• Isolated data capture.
  As critical asset health issues are recorded by field teams, they often remain isolated for a period. Once they reach the capital planning system, the reality on the ground had already shifted – meaning the plans and resulting investments are often not aligned with the current reality.
• Capital funding based on historic data.
  The lack of real-time visibility means that prioritization stems from whoever is loudest in the room, rather than making data-driven decisions.
• Reactive and tactical work.
  Manual reconciliation of disparate files takes a significant amount of time, with some estimates demonstrating that organizations can lose 1,200 hours – or more – to this work. Further, this type of work moves engineers from strategic analysts to task-checkers and data-entry clerks.

Building a Data Ecosystem for Asset Management

To break the cycle of reactive management, it requires that organizations move away from siloed software solutions and disparate spreadsheets. Focusing on building a connected health and capital planning workflow means that there is a live link between the engineering reality on the ground and the strategic financial goals in the boardroom.

To start, utilities organizations benefit from transitioning to dynamic funding requests. By replacing manual, document-heavy processes with an intuitive, easy-to-use request system, organizations can eliminate friction between identifying a need and requesting the funds.

Many organizations plan on a regular cadence. Whether its quarterly or as they plan for the budget for the following year, this planning schedule creates gaps in responding to infrastructure needs as they emerge.

Historically, reviewing requests for funding have followed a process that’s based on inconsistent data across requests. The loudest voice in the room, or historical bias, may be the grounds for making these critical decisions. Using objective prioritization built on similar data can help the decision-making team understand how to truly prioritize the incoming requests against the CapEx budget.

Data in one system offers visibility, but it also unlocks the ability to leverage advanced technology to improve the evaluation and prioritization process. A flexible ranking engine, for instance, gives organizations the ability to target the highest-risk assets first by leveraging objective data points as justification for the investment. For many organizations, this shifts the focus from checking the box for infrastructure advancements to true risk mitigation.

In addition to improved prioritization, advanced technology solutions can replace manual data analysis with automated insights. Eliminating manual data provides numerous benefits to the organization, from eliminating the chance for human error to saving time and elevating the role of engineers and business analysts.

Endevor data shows that engineers typically spend a great deal of time searching for and collecting data from disparate sources. With a single source of truth for all asset management data, this reduces the hours dedicated to looking for information by nearly two thirds.

Beyond engineering, project managers spend just as much time – if not more – on managing manual spreadsheets and disparate data. Shifting to a technology solution offers a complete reduction in the amount of time required for syncing financial data, which can lead to faster, and more informed, decisions.

Overall, the implementation of an end-to-end asset intelligence platform like Endevor can transform how utilities capture, respond, and manage requests – from identifying issues with system health to informing critical milestones in the capital planning process.

The Data Connection from Health to Capital Planning

By implementing a connected health and capital planning workflow, organizations can achieve a live link between reality in engineering and strategic goals in finance.

The value of this data together goes beyond building better interdepartmental relationships. In fact, there are a few key areas where it helps the organization to work more efficiently while saving costs in the meantime.

Reducing Administrative Burden by 75%

With teams focusing on managing manual processes and spreadsheets, a great deal of time is spent on paperwork, manual tasks, and data entry. Using technology like Endevor can shift this administrative burden to automated processes, meaning that the organization can reduce the amount of time spent on administrative tasks by 75%.

For engineers and project managers alike, this opens an opportunity for these roles to spend more time on delivering strategic results, which can better support the organization as it focuses on meeting its future goals.

100% Real-time Health Visibility

Lack of visibility into system and infrastructure health creates risk throughout the asset lifecycle. Issues can quickly turn into emergencies, and lack of insight into where to invest can mean funding gets prioritized for the wrong issues.

Access to real-time health visibility from asset management to capital planning gave teams the opportunity to make critical decisions based on the latest data, helping to better inform the entire capital planning process.

3X Faster Strategic Decision Making

A solidified process for bringing issues to the committee for review. Engineers and project managers serving as strategic partners. Prioritization and risk ranking automated via advanced technology.

These are just a few examples of what informs the faster strategic decision making for organizations leveraging the Endevor platform. A single source of truth for all data, combined with consistent data for all issues and funding requests, results in improving the speed of making decisions by three-fold.

In an era where infrastructure reliability is non-negotiable, the ability to act on real-time data is the ultimate competitive advantage for today’s utilities organizations.

End-to-end asset management solves an IT problem of disparate systems. But, it also ensures that every asset – from the smallest valve to the largest power node – is accounted for within a unified intelligent system.

Endevor continues to lead the way in bridging the gap between manual infrastructure tasks and strategic asset management. Schedule your demo today to see how we can help your organization.