Our client, a leading U.S. utilities company, embarked on a mission to streamline and scale their data environments for greater efficiency and accessibility. Their challenge lay in identifying and prioritizing the most impactful data management initiatives for meter usage and critical assets to drive business value and enable strategic outcomes. Through our expertise, we developed a structured, well-defined approach, delivering a comprehensive roadmap of data management opportunities to guide them toward their future-state goals.
- Outcome 1: Increased data accuracy and automation to reduce data correction and validation rework by 80%
- Outcome 2: Enabled up to $100M annual revenue recovery by correcting wholesale market payment discrepancies through improved data practices
- Outcome 3: Identified 22+ opportunities to tackle gaps and accomplish strategic data objectives
The challenge
In the utility industry, regulatory pressures and the need for enhanced operational efficiency are driving significant change. Every three years, utilities undergo a General Rate Case (GRC) proceeding with the Public Utilities Commission (PUC), where they present budget requests focused on key initiatives to maintain and improve the utility system. Ahead of the 2025 GRC, our client recognized the need to improve data management to support their budget proposals. Specifically, they were facing challenges in effectively collecting and managing meter usage and critical asset data, which was impacting decision-making, asset management and regulatory compliance.
With increasing infrastructure demands and a push for better oversight, our client was faced with the challenge to implement a comprehensive data management strategy. Partnering with us, they aimed to create a plan that prioritized investments in data capabilities, ensuring they could meet both current needs and future demands while aligning with GRC requirements. While clear data management challenges such as manual processes and data quality issues were evident, the primary challenge lay in achieving alignment between IT and business units. Different departments had varying perspectives on the most critical data priorities and use cases to meet their respective goals. However, securing leadership support and funding required consolidating these diverse needs into cohesive opportunities that supported both operational and enterprise-wide strategies. The lack of centralized visibility further led to fragmented automation and analytics efforts that lacked scalability.
The approach
Our approach involved a structured, iterative process that evolved through each phase of the project. We began by conducting stakeholder discovery sessions with business units, IT data teams and select leadership to understand the varying data perspectives, pain points and opportunities across the organization. This discovery phase, combined with benchmarking against industry best practices, allowed us to craft an opportunity assessment that addressed enterprise-wide data needs while also considering the unique challenges faced by different operating units.
Key steps in our approach included:
- Opportunity assessment: We synthesised findings from stakeholder sessions and identified critical opportunities for improving data management, balancing quick wins, incremental enhancements and long-term business transformations.
- Sequenced roadmap: We developed a comprehensive roadmap that prioritized initiatives based on impact, ensuring a balanced approach to both short-term gains and long-term strategic goals.
- Leadership alignment: We worked closely with leadership to link data initiatives directly to business objectives and operational benefits. This ensured strong executive support for the plan and helped drive organizational buy-in.
- Final Socialization & implementation: We socialized the plan across the organization, aligning all teams around shared priorities, and secured the necessary leadership endorsement to begin implementation.
This holistic approach aimed to ensure the project not only addressed immediate data management challenges but also set the foundation for sustained business success.
The value delivered
Our data strategy equipped IT and business leaders with a comprehensive playbook for modernization, creating a unified roadmap for the future. By identifying 31 pain points and prioritizing 22 key opportunities, we not only provided a clear path to address data management gaps but also outlined immediate actions and prioritised which opportunities to immediately address. Additionally, we helped identify which of these opportunities could be pursued within current ongoing programs. This approach balanced efficiency improvements with long-term analytics goals. The five-year roadmap, endorsed by executives, set the foundation for scaling data efforts that will optimize costs, reduce revenue loss and enable critical analytics adoption for renewable energy integration. With over 75 stakeholders engaged, our work empowered the utility to unify priorities, improve data quality and build reliable infrastructure to support a growing customer base and advance their transition to a more sustainable, future-proof model.