Multiple vendors, increased costs
A large utility company is focused on transforming its business to drive safe, reliable, affordable, and sustainable clean energy for its valued customers. Their family of companies provides electricity and natural gas services to power customers’ lives. Safety, reliability, customer satisfaction, and operational efficiency are paramount to achieving operational excellence.
The company engaged multiple technology vendors to add top-tier capabilities to their efforts. However, managing these vendors led to increased costs and oversight, highlighting the need for a consolidation strategy for operational support and maintenance. This strategy would enable them to modernize their data platform and systems, reduce operating costs, and provide consolidated visibility into ongoing work.
As the company worked with several large technology vendors to modernize its IT Data Platform & Analytics organization, it successfully implemented a new cloud-based technology stack. However, this left them with the challenge of managing multiple, disparate teams, each requiring oversight and direction. Additionally, the company faced significant pressure to align with an organizational goal of reducing operations and maintenance costs by $175 million by the end of 2026.
Company leadership quickly realized that a consolidated operational support model was needed to make significant strides toward their vision. They sought a support model incorporating legacy systems, separate operating companies, and the new cloud-based technology platform.
Leveraging a strategic partnership
CAI and the utility company have maintained a strong, strategic partnership for over 30 years. As part of this collaboration, a CAI business intelligence team (embedded within a larger managed service program at the company) has supported and maintained over 40 legacy systems since 2018. This team was the logical starting point for building a more diverse team, capable of handling the various tools and technologies required for the consolidation efforts. Their proven track record in maintaining critical systems and managing the legacy technical stack for on-premises systems made them ideal for this role.
CAI acted swiftly, developing an approach and assembling a team that combined existing customer knowledge with new support analysts, all within a compressed timeline. Application knowledge transfer activities for the new systems began immediately, leveraging a hybrid model of internal experts who were familiar with customer processes. They were assisted by additional team members who incorporated the new technologies into the consolidated scope.
Achieving operational consolidation to reduce cost and gain efficiency
CAI exceeded customer expectations by completing staffing and knowledge transition milestones ahead of schedule. This exceptional performance enabled the company to reduce operational staffing levels as planned and realize several benefits:
Cost reductions
The company achieved immediate cost savings of approximately $4,000 per month during the initial months of the consolidation plan, as the team was optimized for the required skillsets and technologies. Additionally, the team utilized their knowledge of the company’s data platform systems to streamline nightly data ingestion processes, eliminating redundancies and idle time. This improvement reduced monthly charges for the company’s cloud-based data and processing services by approximately $3,000 per month.
Following the consolidation, the company reduced the total team size from 16 full-time equivalents (FTEs), which included three large vendors, to a single CAI team of 10 FTEs. This consolidation resulted in significant cost savings and simplified core operations to a single vendor for improved oversight and visibility.
$3K per month
Of reduced spend for cloud-based data and processing services
40% reduction
In FTEs, from 16 down to 10
Critical processing consistency
The CAI team leveraged their extensive experience in analyzing, tracking, and reporting monthly regulatory requirements to consolidate and improve critical processes in revenue automation and SOX compliance. They integrated new regulatory processing into their scope a month ahead of schedule, enhancing process consistency and compliance.
Productivity gains
The team achieved productivity efficiencies and took on responsibility for an additional 12 applications, including new data factories and other systems aligned with the company's future direction. This shift allowed the company to redeploy high-value team members from strategic vendors to other value-added assignments.
With the new structure in place, the utility company is better able to focus on priority activities and reap the benefits of significant cost and resource savings.
“Pleased with [team leadership] and the entire CAI team successfully and independently driving the Azure REVA September run. We did not expect anything less from this team, and want to register the early success of our partnership!”
A trusted partner for operational efficiency
Working closely alongside key stakeholders, the CAI team enabled the utility company to recognize the value in leveraging a single strategic partner to consolidate its vendor footprint, create better operational controls, and generate efficiencies that help propel it as the model utility provider of the future.
As consumer knowledge and expectations continue to rise, providers need innovative technology partners. Looking to experts who specialize in the utilities sector can help them rapidly pivot their business and stay ahead of shifting demand. CAI's managed IT and technology consulting services can enable quick and efficient organizational response and delivery, helping you find the most value in your systems and staying ahead of the industry. If you’re interested in learning more, contact us.
