Spend Optimization Suite (SOS)

Turn Your Strategy Into Reality

Managing risk and planning investments can get complicated, especially with tight budgets, aging infrastructure, and regulatory pressures. Utilities need a smarter, simpler way to stay in control of asset management and investment planning.

Spend Optimization Suite (SOS) helps utilities make smarter decisions and build optimized plans that reduce risk and deliver results.

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ELECTRICITY

– Distribution
– Transmission
– Generation

GAS

– Distribution
– Transmission
– Storage

WATER

– Steam/Chilled
– Wastewater Production and/or Distribution

TRANSPORT

– Airports
– Rail/Metro

GENERATION AND RENEWABLES

What You Can Achieve With SOS

USE STRATEGY TO DRIVE DECISIONS

  • Link strategy to risk management and investment planning decisions
  • Set priorities and adjust based on sensitivity analyses and business changes

BUILD A PRIORITIZED RISK REGISTER AND LONG TERM ASSET PLANS

  • Create multi year investment plans optimized across complex constraints such as cost, resource, reliability, region, and more
  • Compare scenario results side by side to reduce analysis and discussion time
  • Balance spend across regions and districts to focus on poor performers
  • Reduce the common bias toward small projects
  • Assess investments across fundamental viewpoints including value (benefit and risk mitigation) and risk of deferral
  • Better understand and reduce “must do” projects

ENSURE OPTIMIZED INVESTMENT PLANS WITH WHAT IF SCENARIOS

  • Create multi year investment plans optimized across complex constraints such as cost, resource, reliability, region, and more
  • Compare scenario results side by side to reduce analysis and discussion time
  • Balance spending across regions and districts to focus on poor performers
  • Reduce the common bias toward small projects
  • Assess investments across fundamental viewpoints including value (benefit and risk mitigation) and risk of deferral
  • Better understand and reduce “must do” projects

IMPROVE EFFECTIVENESS WITH TRANSPARENT COMMUNICATIONS

  • Use automated outputs to communicate project selection decisions, portfolio benefits, and risk exposure to planners, executives, and other stakeholders
  • Demonstrate the rigorous, transparent process to regulators

ENABLE BEST PRACTICES

  • Align your process with ISO55000 standards. ISL Analytics is an IAM endorsed assessor and corporate member
  • View risk holistically in terms of business threats as well as asset health issues
  • Link problems and opportunities to needs to investments to show a full circle view of overall company risk being mitigated by optimized investment portfolios

WORK WITH EXPERIENCE TO ENSURE SUCCESS

  • Benefit from ISL Analytics 40+ SOS implementations at utilities worldwide, more than twice the number of clients of major competitors combined
  • Leverage ISL Analytics for both its world class SOS software solution and expert management consulting team
  • Draw on ISL Analytics rich industry knowledge and change management experience to support you through every step

Business Benefits

Draw on our experience from implementations at >40 companies worldwide. Some of our customers have achieved:

5%

INCREASE IN SPEND APPROVED BY THE REGULATOR

40%

REDUCTION IN

MANDATORY SPEND

DESIGNATIONS

20%

REDUCTION IN NON-ESSENTIAL CAPITAL SPENDING

TO MEET COMPLIANCE OBLIGATIONS AND RISK PROFILE OBJECTIVES, BASED ON SOS OUTPUTS

FREEING UP DISCRETIONARY SPENDING TO ACHIEVE ADDITIONAL VALUE AND MITIGATE ADDITIONAL RISK

WITH A VALUE CASE TO REINVEST 18% IN RELIABILITY AND OPERATIONAL IMPROVEMENTS

SOS: Designed to Meet Your Needs

MODULAR AND SCALABLE

  • Modules can be purchased and implemented separately, allowing you to focus first on your highest priority areas and grow the application with your business and data availability
  • Connect to your AERO application for more robust predictive analytics around economic replacement of critical assets

CONSISTENT CORPORATE WIDE PLATFORM

  • The SOS provides a platform for effective investment decision making across the entire business. This is accomplished through a robust process for quantifying the benefits of each proposed project and ensuring consistency across the organization in how individual projects are evaluated
  • We have helped companies use SOS to optimize a common budget across business units to better meet strategic goals. Although challenging, we have a proven process to reach upwards of 90 percent objectivity in the scoring, establishing comfort in the results across business unit stakeholders

ROBUST OPTIMIZATION ENGINE

  • True linear programming optimization algorithms provide better results than simple prioritization or heuristics (though these are often touted as optimization). This is especially applicable in the case of multiple constraints (i.e. budget, scarce resource types) and more complex scenarios

CONFIGURABLE AND MULTILINGUAL

  • Create multi year investment plans optimized across complex constraints such as cost, resource, reliability, region, and more
  • Compare scenario results side by side to reduce analysis and discussion time
  • Balance spending across regions and districts to focus on poor performers
  • Reduce the common bias toward small projects
  • Assess investments across fundamental viewpoints including value (benefit and risk mitigation) and risk of deferral
  • Better understand and reduce “must do” projects

IN-HOUSE IMPLEMENTATION EXPERTISE WORLDWIDE

  • ISL Analytics is first and foremost a consulting company, where every implementation team member has experience in successful change management
  • ISL Analytics consultants provide top notch service and ongoing support with personalized client managers assigned to every client. Talk to someone who knows your business rather than a generic helpdesk
  • ISL Analytics has experts around the world, from North America to regional European offices to Asia Pacific

AFFORDABLE

  • Reap the benefits of a world class, tried and true methodology and user friendly application without the time and cost of a software house enterprise IT application
  • Our solution can be tailored to meet your needs in terms of data availability, resource availability during implementation, and customization
  • Foundational to this process is maximizing value for the money spent. We are confident the SOS provides the most “bang for your buck” of any solution in the market

INTEGRATED

  • Standardized flat file upload functionality allows batch import of new or updated data out of the box. The application creates a template that is immediately responsive to configuration changes. No need for IT, customized programming, or “black box” integration rules
  • If you prefer something more direct, ISL Analytics technical experts can work with you to accommodate customized import and export requirements with existing systems using common integration approaches

INTERNATIONAL STANDARD SUPPORT (ISO55000)

  • The SOS is aligned with and supports achievement of international standards such as PAS55 and ISO55000
  • ISL Analytics is an endorsed IAM assessor and corporate member, bringing this expertise to every implementation

SOS User Community

Through the Spend Optimization Suite (SOS) User Forum, our international client companies share ideas and learn from each other’s experiences. Our inaugural conference was in 2005 and is held approximately every two years. Over 2-3 days, SOS users are able to make peer contacts, share challenges and best practices, and discuss the latest topics in risk management and investment planning. The group also provides key input to drive the development roadmap for continual enhancement of the application.