Are you a transmission and distribution leader trying to analyze the relative value, risk, and strategic alignment of upgrading an aging transmission line in a high-demand urban area versus a rural transmission line needed to integrate renewable energy? Or how about determining whether to prioritize underground transmission lines or advanced monitoring systems to mitigate wildfire risk?

Are you a customer leader trying to prioritize advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) rollout initiatives or evaluate the relative value of launching a new residential energy efficiency program versus expanding demand response to commercial and industrial customers?

Are you a CIO trying to compare investments in process automation, advanced analytic tools, or predictive maintenance technologies to improve operational efficiency?

Or perhaps you’re the CFO currently going through end-of-year planning and trying to weigh investment decisions across the enterprise on an apples-to-apples basis?

In an era where capital planning, risk management, and asset management decisions are more complex and under more scrutiny than ever, organizations like yours face the daunting challenge of balancing short-term performance with long-term sustainability.

Too often, decision makers grapple with incomplete data, siloed systems and processes, and a lack of transparency, leading to suboptimal investments that drain resources and miss strategic opportunities. It’s time to throw away those cumbersome Excel spreadsheets and stop rewiring those enterprise resource planning and project portfolio management (ERP and PPM) systems to accomplish major efforts they aren’t meant to handle. Instead, invest in a purpose-built, AI-powered digital solution for capital investment planning.

Transforming utility investments with AI

With purpose-built AI-powered digital solutions, we’re helping utilities streamline their planning processes and deliver capital plans that are optimizing their limited resources. Here are some of the highest-value capabilities utilities can tap into through an AI-powered technology solution:

Objective comparisons of dissimilar investments on a common scale
The ability to configure AI-powered value frameworks that align your corporate strategy with investment planning is crucial. With a value framework, you can incorporate and consider unlimited quantitative and qualitative value measures based on risk, financial and non-financial benefits and costs, KPIs, service levels, et cetera. This capability allows for objective comparisons on a common economic scale, even for dissimilar investments with different drivers (e.g., safety vs. reliability) and from different lines of business. For instance, Copperleaf, an IFS company, is a solution provider that enables its customers to make better, faster, and more value-based decisions with confidence. Together with their customers, Copperleaf has developed a comprehensive value framework library of 250+ industry best-practice value models.

Enhanced risk modeling
AI is essential for modeling asset data against countless risk measures to establish baseline risk profiles and predict outcomes after actions are taken. Using AI enhances asset risk modeling by better forecasting the probability and consequences of failure and the assets’ future investment needs based on condition, location, weather, past or deferred investments, and so forth. Using a two-way integration with risk and asset information from your enterprise asset management (EAM), geographic information system (GIS), computerized maintenance management system (CMMS), etc., and defining value and risk measures for individual assets will significantly enhance the speed and quality of decision-making.

Portfolio optimization and scenario analysis
Optimization is more advanced than prioritization—it considers and honors multiple scenarios, investment alternatives, and constraints and dependencies over a set planning horizon. The result is a portfolio of investments that optimizes limited resources and provides the highest returns.

Fast, interactive, scalable analytics
Think of the last time you wanted to share a specific data point with your team or include it in a capital planning presentation, but it wasn’t readily available on existing dashboards and reports. Now, with machine learning and natural language querying, you can ask questions in plain English and receive customized dashboards with the specific information you were looking for. Amazon QuickSight is an example of this type of technology that can be embedded directly into a digital capital planning solution, rapidly enhancing the speed and quality of your analytics and reporting.

More defensible and automated rate cases
Ultimately, capital plans must be approved by regulators—a resource-intensive process for utilities, involving vast amounts of data, complex modeling, and detailed documentation to justify costs and rate adjustments. Generative AI (GenAI) can significantly enhance the efficiency of translating your capital plan into a regulatory filing and the success rate of the filings by automating documentation and summaries, identifying regulatory trends and precedents, tailoring communication material to different stakeholders, and automating searches to find supporting evidence from both your organization’s and peer utilities’ past filings. Slalom is at the forefront of this mission-critical task, having built a prototype GenAI tool that enhances and accelerates regulatory filings and is actively codeveloping it with and for our clients.

Real-world impact

Slalom recently partnered with one of the Southeast’s largest utilities to revolutionize its investment planning process using AI. Here’s how the utility redefined its approach and achieved game-changing results:

1. Quick time to value: In less than six months, the utility rolled out a configurable commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) solution, complete with a robust governance structure and targeted change management. This rapid deployment empowered 80+ stakeholders to dive into the system and, for the first time, make apples-to-apples comparisons across diverse investments for their next planning cycle.
2. Boosted capital efficiency: Instead of merely prioritizing projects, the AI-powered solution also optimized investments across the board. The result was a projected 4%–10% boost in efficiency across a $1 billion capital portfolio, translating to millions in added value and greater returns for the organization and its stakeholders.
3. Streamlined planning process: No more lengthy, labor-intensive regional planning meetings. With automated scenario planning and streamlined budget adjustments, the utility has cut hundreds of person-hours from its annual planning cycle — freeing up time for strategic, high-impact decisions.
4. Stronger regulatory confidence: Armed with a data-driven, defensible project evaluation process, the utility now has robust evidence to back its regulatory filings. This newfound transparency increases confidence among leadership and regulatory bodies, ensuring compliance and paving the way for smoother approvals.

Next steps to elevate your planning

As you continue your journey of maturing your capital planning capabilities, below are four actions you can take today to begin moving the needle within your organization:

1. Assess your current state: Conduct a comprehensive assessment of your capital planning capabilities across your people, process, and technology, identifying challenge areas, risks, resistance, and opportunities for improvement.
2. Gather requirements: Identify and document key features and functionality your organization requires of a capital planning solution, considering how AI can enhance the solution and the end-to-end process. It will become clear that attempting to leverage Excel or stretching your ERP or PPM systems will not meet all the requirements you identify.
3. Decide on build versus buy: Perform a cost-benefit analysis on potential solutions, recognizing that time-to-value and leveraging broad industry expertise are key benefits to achieve.
4. Focus on people and process: Technology alone isn’t the answer. To ensure lasting success, design a capital planning process that seamlessly integrates with your technology. Establish strong governance and prioritize change management to prepare your people for what’s ahead. These human elements are often the deciding factor between success and failure.

Closing thoughts

AI-powered solutions are redefining how utilities approach capital investment planning. By replacing outdated or misused tools with purpose-built solutions, utilities can streamline the decision-making process, optimize limited resources, and improve transparency. Wherever you are on your journey, Slalom is eager to partner with you to modernize your approach, drive better outcomes, and realize greater value for your organization and stakeholders.