Convening Blue-Ribbon Panel to Evaluate Biological Hazards and Precautions for Wastewater Workers The Key Metrics to Measure Performance Success for Energy, Utilities, and Resources Organizations

The Key Metrics to Measure Performance Success for Energy, Utilities, and Resources Organizations

Colin Beaney

The energy, utilities, and resources sector (EUR) is one of the few industries where financial control means managing high-value capital assets and equipment, and a large diverse workforce, which both have a huge impact on productivity and profitability. Combine this with a volatile and changing market climate and the need for solid supporting software implementation becomes crucial. My company, IFS, has done recent industry research to pinpoint the key metrics EUR organizations must be able to quantify in order to track success—right down to every asset, worker, and contract.

There are a many areas of common ground across the spectrum of EUR organizations when it comes to running their businesses. Most deal with high volumes of mission-critical capital assets and equipment, and most employ a vast workforce that comprises different skill levels, areas of expertise, and even contractor specialization. Crucially, these common areas have a direct impact on productivity and profitability.

When looking at business software that supports these key operational areas, the slightest improvement can translate into quantifiable benefits for EUR organizations—

extending asset service life, improving workforce efficiency, and boosting the bottom line.

An Industry Bracing for Impact and Crying Out for Visibility

In its new report, “2020 Power and Utilities Industry Outlook,” the consulting firm Deloitte explains:

“New technologies, evolving customer preferences, and the changing competitive landscape are leading many water and power companies to explore new business models. Some models may help utilities further enable a clean energy transition, and some may also provide new revenue sources.”

Exploring any new business model means being able to accurately measure success and failure. The visibility into these metrics can be provided by enterprise software designed with EUR operations in mind. For this reason, a white paper was recently commissioned 1 to find a comprehensive view of the key areas that EUR customers have focused on, and the key metrics they have tracked when deploying enterprise software. Across such a varied industry, this meant working with a number of customers who manage similar pain points, including efficiently managing critical assets, optimizing a large workforce, and comprehensively supporting business operations.

Key Focus Areas of Study

From their extensive feedback, it’s possible to map out the key focus areas these customers outlined, as well as the quantifiable results they have achieved when addressing them with their enterprise software implementations.

Better Asset and Equipment Management Software

It’s been established how EUR organizations must protect revenue and manage costs, while operating and maintaining capital assets. This equipment is expensive to buy, operate, and maintain, and is on the front line of many EUR operations.

This could span organizations that operate ports and rely on complex, modern installations with fully automated assets to offload and transport containers and bulk goods, to a company in power generation, or oil and gas, where assets are directly linked to the safe and reliable operation of a plant.

In the white paper, the analysts found that a number of EUR organizations have successfully managed to extend the service life of key assets and increase uptime and availability.

One customer highlighted better asset, part, and workforce tracking as improving the maintenance of business equipment by stating that, “The software helps us extend the life span of capital assets. I think it’s around 10 to 15 percent longer because of higher maintenance quality and assessments.”

Dynamic Scheduling Means Meeting and Exceeding End-Customer Expectations

One of the fundamental revenue generation models for EUR organizations is servicing infield assets or dispatching engineers to customer homes for installations and repairs. This is often the only time many customers will meet their utility or energy provider face to face. Customer satisfaction is king here, so naturally, metrics, such as first-time fix rates, service level agreement (SLA) adherence, minimized travel, and on-time meeting appointments are key.

Simply scheduling the manpower and resources needed to guarantee such a high level of customer experience can be a time-intensive and inefficient process, but dynamic scheduling built into a software solution can provide some key workflow improvements. This is where the white paper unearthed some important metrics that some customers were able to hit by dynamic scheduling of their field technicians.

Across all the industries IFS serves, customers reported completing 28 percent more work orders and improved delivery speed on orders and products. Not only does this mean end-customers are benefiting from quicker and better service, organizations increase their speed of task completion, which drives faster and higher revenue. This is an everyday occurrence once dynamic scheduling is incorporated into in field operations.

Explains one customer, “We’re seeing big savings in scheduling activities. Before, it would take a couple of days, and now it takes minutes because it’s basically self-service. This happens every day for the field service team.”

Go Enterprisewide: Consolidating Data Across Entire Energy, Utilities, and Resources Organizations

The EUR organizations can make all the operational changes they like, but they will be in vain if they can’t consolidate all this good work and connect vast information streams into a core enterprise system of record.

When an EUR organization is operating across the entire United States, or even the whole North American continent, building one, unified picture of the business is difficult when there are tens of thousands of assets and divisions located in hundreds of geographic locations.

On top of this, it’s common for many EUR companies to operate different systems for different processes—often for historical reasons, such as mergers and acquisitions, or selecting point solutions for point problems as a company has grown.

When an enterprisewide solution is specialized for EUR, customers reported that they are able to manage assets, projects, and services alongside human capital management, finance, and supply chains. In fact, when it came to planning business budgetary cycles, customers across multiple industries cited, on average, they had quickened them by over 20 percent.

Zeroing In on Success

In a highly volatile and changing market climate, EUR organizations need to look to increase asset efficiency, make the best use of their workforces, and get smarter about their operations. This means focusing on these strategic business areas and making sure their enterprise software implementation can facilitate and measure the impact. That way, they will be able to unlock efficiencies in these areas and manage every asset, worker, and contract across the enterprise.

Colin Beaney is vice president for energy, utilities, and resources at IFS in London.