Utility Companies

ABOUT UTILITY COMPANIES

Successful power, water, natural gas and other utilities providers are looking to improve operational excellence and risk management tracking across multiple plants in a region. Through working with some of the companies at the forefront of this movement, AchieveIt has been able to change the way thousands of employees are kept safe on the job and is helping realize huge efficiencies in risk management processes.

THE CHALLENGE

Those in the utilities industry are tasked with the challenge of tracking compliance adherence and risk management across several plants. This can be cumbersome, especially with the pressure and necessity to consistently develop more efficient and safer processes.

In most companies, this responsibility lies with one senior executive, who is often overwhelmed by leading these initiatives while still serving customers. Typically, this data exists in monstrous Excel spreadsheets and PowerPoint slides that someone has to manually compile and analyze in order to see which initiatives are struggling and what adjustments should be made to get things back on track.

Utility companies across the globe struggle with viewing initiative progress as part of a bigger picture. With complex and inefficient reporting practices, the language of success is difficult to understand. Oftentimes, longer-term strategic projects can’t even get off the ground because so much time is consumed just by trying to get a snapshot of progress.

BIG CHALLENGE

The obligation to find a better solution to track plan execution is becoming more evident with the increase of competing priorities.

In a complex business, it’s imperative to keep objectives very simple. The goal is to make the objectives conversational so everyone – from the mechanic working on the pulverizer to the chair of the board of directors – can address them with ease. But when it’s difficult to see those initiatives as a big picture, the intended simplicity is lost.

For utility companies that go through risk mapping or business planning exercises, tracking progress can be an issue. Many of the tools organizations use make it difficult to understand how front-line employees’ action items roll up to overarching priorities. Furthermore, with plant managers spending so much time chasing updates, monitoring deadlines and reporting on results, longer-term strategic projects can get left behind.

Now, utility leaders are finding more time in status updates meetings to address items that need help, instead of spending time trying to understand their current positions. The uniformity, standardization, and consistency AchieveIt provides is helping teams reclaim and reallocate valuable time.

THE RESULTS

A handful of utility companies using AchieveIt have even found other use cases. These organizations now use AchieveIt to gain a higher level of transparency between plants in other regions, enabling the exchange of ideas and best practices. One organization in particular began using AchieveIt for business planning, and then transitioned into using the platform for risk management.

AchieveIt’s platform capabilities, and guidance and best practices provided by the AchieveIt support team seemed to fit hand-in-hand with this organization’s needs. This has been the case more and more often as other companies in the utilities industry begin to look for a better way to manage their initiatives to drive better results.

This new visibility has sparked inter-plant discussions, opening communication and creating dialogues around strategy that didn’t exist before. These organizations have made the cultural shift toward execution. Across the board, plant managers and others responsible for reporting have saved countless hours, and are applying that time to executing their plans.

Other organizations are beginning to follow the trend of these forward-thinking, innovative utility companies. AchieveIt will help them reap the benefits.

“AchieveIt has made it easier for our teams to quickly get to the information they need, when they need it.”