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After a recent period of financial retrenchment, utilities are once again focused on GROWTH. Utility executives are enjoying significant cash flows, improved credit quality, lower operations and maintenance (O&M) costs, favorable regulatory treatment, growing service territories, and increasing customer demand for power.

However, this time around it appears that today's utility executives will stick to their core business and not be seduced to take the risks associated with the unrealistic growth fantasies of earlier deregulation.

Utilities are trying to break the stereotype of the low-growth, low-risk, high-yielding investment as they compete with higher-growth investments as the US economy improves and/or with fixed-income investments as interest rates rise. This means that the back-to-basics disciplines of operational excellence which have been successfully employed in the past few years to meet budgetary constraints will need to be supplemented by more aggressive growth strategies as they plan large-scale transmission and generation programs and comply with more stringent environmental restrictions.

This suggests a financial climate in which we'll see greater merger and acquisition activity as a transformational vehicle for achieving growth and for achieving the strategic and operational advantages of larger scale. And it will be increasingly important that utilities realize the desired synergies and cost efficiencies that they seek through their M&A activity or risk the consequences of a punitive stock market.

Questas Consulting is uniquely positioned to help utilities realize their transformational objectives because we understand the industry and how to effectively manage both the transformational and transitional actions that produce the results that count.

Services We Offer for Utilities

  • Top-Line Growth
  • Business & market strategies
  • Market segmentation analysis
  • Product/service development
  • Non-regulated Business launch and infrastructure development
  • Customer retention strategies
  • M&A and M&A defense strategies
  • Pre- and Post-Merger/Acquisition planning - due diligence, synergy opportunity analysis, transition and integration planning
  • Strategic partnering assessments
  • Change Management
  • Executive coaching and succession planning
  • Strategic Alignment
  • People - Process - Technology Alignment
  • Strategic Intent Confirmation and Commitment
  • Leadership Capability Aligned and Developed
  • Goal Translation Facilitated
  • Performance Objectives and Measures Established
  • Reward Practices Aligned
  • Organization design and behavior assessments
  • Talent identication and development
  • Transition management
  • Process & Service Excellence
  • Diagnostic assessments
  • Service modeling
  • Portfolio rationalization
  • Strategic IT & E-commerce/E-business strategies
  • Effective Enterprise-level Transformations - operational, cultural, organizational, technological
  • Process-focused organizational model
  • In- and out-sourcing - process (BPO) and IT (ITO)
  • Consolidations & intra- and inter-company Shared Services models
  • Merger & acquisition implementations
  • Turnarounds & divestitures
  • Effective Process-level Transformations
  • Processing engineering & management
  • Metrics development
  • Staff modeling
  • Cost Management
  • ABC/ABM and unit cost allocations
  • Outsourcing - BPO and ITO
  • Intra- and Inter-company shared services
  • Process engineering and automation
  • O&M and Capital Expense cost reduction programs
  • Staff modeling
  • Technology
  • Strategy
  • Application assessment and selection
  • Evaluation and application of BPM tools
  • Developing competencies - analytics & informatics
  • E-business and E-commerce implementations
  • In-/ outsourcing of IT

Related Case Studies

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Utilities Clients

  • AGL Resources
  • Atlanta Gas Light
  • Virginia Natural Gas
  • NUI (Elizabethtown Gas and Citizens Gas Florida)
  • Boston Gas
  • Columbia Gas
  • Consolidated Edison
  • Consolidated Natural Gas
  • Consumers Power
  • KeySpan Energy
  • Michigan Consolidated
  • National Fuel Gas
  • Orange and Rockland Utilities
  • Public Service Electric & Gas (New Jersey)
  • Wisconsin Gas
  • Wisconsin Electric Power