Unleashing Unifier

Christine Rowley

Xcel Energy

Unleashing Unifier

Solving the need for a regulated utility to capture almost 6,000

project initiatives, prioritizing and budgeting those initiatives and

ultimately executing around 700 projects a year

Xcel Energy• Major U.S. electric and natural gas company

• Annual revenues of $10.7 billion

• Based in Minneapolis, Minn.

• Operating in eight states

• 3.4 million electricity customers

• 1.9 million natural gas customers

Energy Supply•Generating facilities use a

variety of fuel sources:

–Coal

–Natural Gas

–Nuclear Fuel

–Water (Hydro)

–Oil

–Refuse

–Wind

–Sun

•81 owned generating

plants

•Capable of producing

17,000 MW of electricity

•Generate approximate 2/3

of our power

•Buy remaining power from

other electricity suppliers

Our Need•Summarized by a VB

program that read each file

and created a “Master

Spreadsheet

–Took at least 8 hours to

run (if it was error free)

–No Requirement to

adhere to forms being

completed

•Capital Request Process

in Excel by Project

Our Need (cont.)•Comparison of Initiation to

Execution???

•Execution of Project was

done via Accounting

Systems and

Spreadsheets

–No Standards except at

the overall project level

Our Challenges• Almost 600 Users

• Over 5,000 “Initiatives”

• Geographically dispersed over 8 states

• 4 legal entities

• Varying processes in each of the different legal

entities

• O&M and Capital had completely different processes

• New ranking system for “initiatives”

• New organizational structure for engineers

• Project leads are primarily engineers

• Adherence to annual budgets – not just project budget

• Adherence to monthly forecasts

Solution

Except….

No Portfolio Management

Unifier

Ideation• Ideation is a Business Process (BP)

• Approval / completion of BP creates shell

• Approval indicates idea is warrants further vetting

• Ideas for emergent current year projects to 20 years out

Phases & Gates• Development Plant Approval BP Status is Approved

• PlanningForms Flagged Completed or Other Conditions Met

• RPCRegional Review BP Completed

• FundingBOD Approved (Portfolio)

• Pre-ExecutionActuals Exist

• ExecutionIn-Service BP Completed

• Close-OutClose-Out BPs Completed

• Completed

Portfolio Management

Portfolio ManagementRanking and Scoring• Create integer-based pull-

down menus– Integer value is score– Label is user-friendly

• Create formulas to add scores together (manipulate)

New Portfolio(s) Each Year

Caution – Cannot change point values as it will alienate data

Portfolio Management

Portfolio Management Features

Editable Fields:

Tab Features:Managing to Overall Targets:

Column Features:

•Start date changes change cashflow in

portfolio (when set up properly)

•Other fields can be designated as editable

•Changes can be set to update projects

upon approval of portfolio

Initiation – Estimates Cash Flow

Execution – Forecast Cash Flow

Integrations• Built data warehouse with data normalization of

financial data as part of project

• Auto loading actuals from warehouse nightly

• Beginning to load monthly forecasts directly into

budgeting system

• In Process – load budgets from portfolio manager into

budgeting system

• In Process – Auto creation of Financial system project

numbers

• In Process – Auto load in-service and completion as-

builts into Capital Asset Accounting system

Current Issues• Phase is not properly populated on project log

• Portfolio Management Performance (IE8)

• Forecasting / Snapshots

• Tracking Variances

• Schedule Manager

• Permissions in Shell Details

• Auto Assignment of group membership from shell

• Cost manager template pushes (need delete)

• Cannot change point values in DE pull downs

• “George” & Performance – Self Hosted

• Cash flow switch to manual requires updating

properties

Lessons Learned• Only use workflow when duration is months not years

• Simple Non-Workflow BPs are best for multiple

contributors

• Templates are awesome for managing a large volume

of projects / users

• Gates with flags has given us a lot of flexibility

• Started out with the KISS principle and we need to

simplify more – What controls are truly necessary?

• Investment in training and support was essential

• Roll-out different features of unifier slowly – Change

Management

Added Benefits of Unifier

• Auto document (PDF) creation at end of workflow and

auto placement into document folders

• Higher control of meeting requirements of each gate

• Added visibility by all of Energy Supply into each project

• Added O&M Project Initiation to Unifier

• Administrative BPs not originally in scope

• Several other areas in Energy Supply are asking how

they can add there processes to Unifier

Next Steps for Energy Supply

• Resource Management

• Lessons Learned

• Safety

• Vendor Access

• Portfolio Manager – Phase II

• Dashboards ??

Enterprise

Implementation

Enterprise• Nuclear – Live

• Business Systems – 2013 Go Live

• Transmission – 2014 Go Live

• Supply Chain – 2014 Go Live

• Others in the queue…– Distribution

– Gas Transmission

– Gas Distribution

– Property Services

Enterprise – Things to Consider

• Prefix EVERYTHING with business unit identifier

–Data Elements/Data Definitions/DDS

–BPs

• Determine how to re-Use DE’s and BPs

• Only one login can create DE’s

• Demand Management Meetings for common areas

–Schedule Manager

–Document Manager

–User Manager

–Fiscal Year, Curve Definitions, etc.

• Change Control

Enterprise Issues

• Need for “Enterprise” DEs

• Need for document manager to allow business specific

defaults

• Need for Enterprise views in Company Workspace

Questions?