Affordability Starts in Operations

Affordability is one of the most pressing challenges facing utilities. But the conversation often starts at the end—with rates, regulatory filings, and customer costs. By then, those costs have already been shaped by decisions made much earlier: How work was prioritized, how crews were deployed, and how effectively operations stayed aligned and adapted as conditions changed.

Every work request creates choices about scope, crews, materials, and follow-through. When those processes rely on disconnected systems, such as paper or spreadsheets, increased costs are inevitable. Crews wait idly for assignments. Jobs require repeat visits because information was incomplete. Back-office teams spend time reconciling records instead of managing work. Contractors create parallel streams of information that make it harder to validate and pay invoices.

Across thousands of work activities, these moments increase expenses with no measurable benefit. Viewing operations through an affordability lens is about asking a simple question: Are we delivering the work customers expect, at the required level of safety, reliability, and service, at the lowest responsible total cost?

Reporting can offer some of those answers, but a complete picture requires a current, shared view of people, work, resources, and priorities. With that operating picture, the right crew can be matched to the right work, information can move faster, and resources can be adjusted as conditions change.

The need for efficiency is amplified during emergency restoration. U.S. electricity customers experienced an average of 11 hours of interruptions in 2024, with major events accounting for 80 percent of those hours. During restoration, decisions are compressed into minutes and mutual aid adds another layer of coordination. Current, connected information becomes critical to keeping people, work, and priorities aligned. Disconnected information creates friction when there is the least tolerance for it.

The key to affordable operations lies in that single, shared, real-time picture of operations in the field, a “control tower” platform for utilities that brings people, work, and data into a shared operating view, helping leaders coordinate work and make decisions with greater confidence.

Utilities cannot control every affordability pressure. They can control how efficiently they turn people, resources, information, and time into customer outcomes. That makes affordability more than a discussion about what customers must pay. It makes affordability an operating discipline.

Read our white paper on the deep connections between affordable power and operational efficiency.