Successfully Managing Performance-Based Regulation
The whole company knows that with the unprecedented industry changes, it can’t be business as usual. Employees are told to be customer-focused, but how does this translate to the company’s overall performance and to what they can truly impact? What are the important areas that they need to focus on? Performance-based Regulation for some utilities provides the list of key metrics that must be monitored.
PUCs’ require distribution system reporting by geographic area (e.g. Operating District) and even by circuit. Other metrics have been developed and are being tied to the company’s rate-of-return. There are other corporate performance targets that have been established by some utilities that are monitored by system staff to guide strategic direction. However, is all this information immediately available in a format that intuitively focuses the appropriate management personnel on the “key” performance issue that needs the most attention? The answer from most utility executives is no.
The Solution
Provide web access to “key” performance information for everyone in the company. Everyone (not just management) needs to focus on what the company has determined to be “key” to the company’s success. Provide a comprehensive geospatial representation of performance metric information. This allows senior executives, managers, and everyone else in the company to quickly focus in on the “key” areas that need attention.
To support this representation, all of the key metrics need to be available from one application. This information needs to be integrated with geographic boundaries and the organizational hierarchy. Rather than providing a list of the summary metric data in a table, different views at different organizational levels are necessary. Having information displayed at different levels allows everyone to see the impact of their group/organization on subsequently higher levels. Conversely, this capability also allows management to see which metric(s) and organizational group(s) are driving company performance. Different views are necessary to display the same
information in different formats as some people relate better to one format versus another. Management needs to be able to quickly “drill down” to both where and what requires his or her attention.
A color-coded thematic map view (Figure 1) provides a clear picture indicating where a particular performance metric is either off-target for the most recent reporting period or if it is projected to be “off-target” by year-end. A progressive color-coding scheme can be used to depict different levels of target goal achievement. This scheme works with a thematic map or an organizational hierarchy rendering depending on the nature of the metric. Typically, operating performance metrics (e.g. service reliability indices, etc.) are based on geographic areas of responsibility. Other metrics, like budget performance, are monitored at the department level as well as to geographic areas.
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