Achieving Maximum Results through Strategic Sourcing

Introduction

There are many solution vendors in the energy industry today, especially with the increased focus on Smart Grid, Demand Response, and Energy Efficiency. The growth in available solutions, vendors, and technologies increase the complexity of the environment in which energy utilities implement new projects and initiatives. In order to meet the demands of an ever-changing high tech environment, a technology and process design consulting firm with comprehensive skill sets ranging from project management to specialized technology expertise can be brought in to thoroughly analyze the situation and provide solutions. Partnering with such a firm brings many advantages. Comprehensive understandings of both the utility sector and the technology required to successfully implement the programs are obtained. Direct success impacts to the project or are generated due to a greater consistency in time to market, delivery of superior quality solutions, and more controlled financials. Indirect benefits to partnering with a technology and process design firm includes, but is not limited to, buffering organizational changes from the utility’s core team, enabling the core team to focus on the business not the enabling elements, and technology knowledge-transfer/documentation libraries so that Utility staff will be able to leverage the knowledge for future projects.

Leveraging Consultants at the Initiative Level

Today, due to the complex project landscape of a technology energy project, a utility’s project team should leverage specialized technology expertise from the point of project charter or business plan drafting through post-deployment. With utilities being required to implement more with less from a budgetary perspective, and hold customer satisfaction and shareholder value in tighter focus, project teams are required to be more thorough and strategic with their funding strategies than ever before. A technology consulting firm offers tremendous insight into articulating broader enterprise-wide benefits of new technologies and strategic data collection, resulting in diverse internal funding sources and potential external cost-offsetting strategies.

During the requirements solicitation phase or drafting of a RFP, a technology consulting firm should facilitate a streamlined process of information gathering and requirements engineering. This will ensure proper definition of the initiative in measurable, attainable, metrics-driven specifications. RFP and RFI question drafting, with support of a technology and process design consulting firm, will enable a utility to confidently understand the technologies and integration points associated to potential solutions, and also identify potential pitfalls found in some technologies and supplier responses.

Through the design and implementation phases of the project a technology and process design consulting firm will be monitoring the correct aspects of the initiative to ensure success. They will require specific documentation artifacts are delivered to ensure the utility, end users, and all organizations involved are aware of the solution design, integration points, and feature sets. Other required document artifacts for implementation include deployment plans, contingency plans, end-to-end testing certification, and on-going support strategy plans – all contributing to the successful implementation of the effort.

Technology project managers and technology experts know the right questions to ask, the proper methodologies to implement, the necessary metrics to track, the right level of information to report to program management, and what potential issues to monitor to ensure an organization’s success in their initiatives.

Leveraging Consultants on the Current Environment

Aside from technology consulting associated to new initiatives; strategic sourcing of on-going support within a utility’s current system portfolio can ensure stability and sustainability of current technologies. Engaging specialized technology experts as extensions of your core team to consult on current technologies and in-place solutions leads to new synergies, identification of robust metrics reporting and reduced error rates in a utilities current environment. Analysis on current technologies can range from high level assessments involving customer interactions, support vendor integrations, and long term viability of selected technologies to low level security architecture audits and systemic interface tracing. A technology consulting firm can be a tremendous asset for the utility as it ensures an unbiased collaborative situation, holding the best interest of the utility’s technical viability and strategy as their top priority. This joint priority and focus guarantees a synergy that will produce top results, sustained quality, and top-tier process execution in both daily operations and strategic initiatives.

Real World Best Practice: Consultants on a Technology Focused Initiative

An Invaluable Technologies client’s (we’ll call them Smart Utility; we have used fictitious names to describe client success stories to coincide with NDA requirements) commercial and industrial demand response solution was comprised of aging and failing technologies. This posed the risk of unrealized demand response resources during an event and participant dissatisfaction. The determination was made to replace the commercial and industrial demand response infrastructure to a strategic, modernized solution, of which the capabilities would enable demand response solutions far beyond the scope of the current failing system. Smart Utility engaged Invaluable Technologies to provide strategic project management and technology oversight to this initiative.

Smart Utility leveraged our deep experience in project management and specialized demand response technology experts to position the project for success from the beginning. Our project management resources were able to leverage our standardized project plan for system replacement, and only customize it slightly to fit the needs of this particular effort, significantly reducing the amount of overhead time in upfront project planning tasks. Our specialized technology experts were able to assist in the drafting of a well defined RFP with appropriate questions meant to drive out general technology items, system integration information, technology longevity requirements, and technical on-going support needs, as well as important process design aspects such as call-center training and interactions. This robustness in the RFP process ensured higher quality, more thorough responses from respondents, reducing assessment time, and promoting a more transparent view into supplier’s proposed solutions.

Throughout the implementation of the project Invaluable Technologies project management resources provided appropriate direction, project guidance, and progress reporting to ensure the project stayed within timeline and budgetary expectations. Project management drove out details from requirement coordination to pilot and full deployment plans. Our team ensured each supporting internal and external group was cognizant of their responsibilities and was provided the appropriate environment to deliver successfully on scope. Invaluable Technologies specialized technology experts consulted on requirements sessions, facilitated system interface design sessions, performed technical documentation reviews, and ensured proper pre-production end-to-end testing – all mandatory items to guarantee a successful technology-centric initiative.

Real World Best Practice: Consultants on a Current Environment

Another client’s (we’ll call them Strategy Utility) residential a/c cycling demand response program is a complex environment with integration between many systems (utility customer information management systems, utility call center systems, support vendor routing and maintenance systems, and control software). Some of these interfaces, by way of original design and insufficiently planned enhancements over the years, were broken and introducing defective data into the environment. The result of this situation was customers not being appropriately signed up on the program, customers incorrectly set up in control software, months delays on hardware installation at customer locations, and overall dashboard metrics and management reporting errors prohibiting utility program management from successfully executing their demand response program viewing its current status.

Strategy Utility’s program management reached out to Invaluable Technologies for technology and process design consultation to assist in the realignment of the program back to a successful, operationally efficient state. Invaluable Technologies specialized technology experts began with knowledge gathering deep dives of the systemic environment, and process documentation authorship of the organizational interactions. This provided a first time holistic view of the environment that could be quickly analyzed for potential technical failure points and operational gaps. At this point manual stop gaps were immediately put into place in an effort to stabilize the environment and not introduce further discrepancies and negative customer interactions. Failure mode assessments were performed to effectively document the potential failure points, their associated risk attributes if a failure did occur, and the likelihood of occurrence. Leveraging IT’s failure mode scoring process, Strategy Utility and IT were able to quickly prioritize areas of technical and process concerns, and begin to define resolution timelines accordingly. Overtime these items were addressed and resolved by collaborating with internal interfacing utility organizations, support vendors, and development of software solutions when appropriate. The success experienced in the realignment of Strategy Utility’s demand response program can be attributed to Strategy Utility’s strategic foresight in engaging specialized technology and process design experts. Also, Invaluable Technologies’ ability to properly assess a current demand response environment, define appropriately prioritized systemic and process solutions, and promote collaborative change across multiple internal and external organizations in a timely, effective manner.

In conclusion the strategic sourcing of particular technology and process design roles of a project and current environment enable a utility to focus on their core business and ensuring that the appropriate technology and process representation is safe guarding the utility’s technical interests. If your team is contemplating a new initiative, in the midst of a project, or looking for much needed support to address current environment concerns, engage a specialized technology and process design consulting firm such as Invaluable Technologies LLC and have confidence in leaving the technical details to the experts.