DYOPATH is a sophisticated IT consultancy providing enterprise customers with IT solutions that optimize both IT infrastructure and business operations. As a business-critical partner, DYOPATH aims to empower clients by applying cutting-edge technology to drive efficiency, productivity, and growth.

DYOPATH serves a large, regional energy provider engaged in generation, transmission, and distribution services to power 460,000+ customers across a 10,000-square-mile area. The DYOPATH team had roadmapped more than 400 IT initiatives with their client when an industry benchmark report called everything into question.

The report suggested that DYOPATH’s client was spending more than its peers on IT maintenance, and less on innovation. As a result, client leadership asked DYOPATH to re-evaluate the IT roadmap to cut maintenance spending. To meet the client’s needs, DYOPATH knew they needed external perspective.

DYOPATH turned to Altus Nova’s meticulous yet efficient process to fairly evaluate the slate of IT initiatives, find ways to cut maintenance spending, and to re-focus on innovation. Together, DYOPATH and Altus Nova embarked on an extensive mapping of end-to-end business processes, first focusing on customer service to reveal areas of greatest impact.

The Altus Nova team quickly saw that customer service itself was working well. But closer examination showed that outage handling was an area of business process with many steps, dependencies, and potential redundancies.

Altus Nova prototyped an AI-powered customer support content repository as one way to speed customers to solution — especially in times of outage. With DYOPATH and their client’s agreement, the Altus Nova team pivoted to more closely analyze outage handling needs.

On storm days, DYOPATH’s client must be poised for action, as outages are 10x more likely under storm conditions. If and when outages occur, power is restored to customers in need through a complex series of interactions that include customer service calls, triage assessments, troubleshooting steps, resource coordination, and truck rolls.

We meticulously mapped both storm day operations and power restoration processes through a series of site visits, “day in the life walks,” staff interviews, and a comprehensive technology audit. Whether restoration required human action, technological capability, or a combination, we captured the level of effort, time spent, and dependencies for each step.

As we worked, a rubric of dependencies emerged. With time-to-restoration as clear success criteria, we could tie the potential benefit of IT initiatives directly to business outcomes. Plugging in current state metrics and comparing them to potential future states with IT spending enabled the real needle-movers to emerge from the pack.

Using the rubric, we were able to show that saving even one minute during the power restoration process cascades into thousands of customer outage hours saved. In this light, it matters very little whether an IT initiative has been labeled “maintenance” or “innovation” — it’s value to the business and to serving customers becomes clear.

Technology is not valuable in and of itself — it is only valuable in creating human benefit. With a clear picture of information flow, dependencies, duplications, and delays, each step of the power restoration process could be tied to minutes and dollars.

DYOPATH and their client could now evaluate and communicate in a new way. Rather than cutting spending on IT initiatives because they were considered “maintenance” or to reduce budget numbers arbitrarily, they could make decisions based on providing more reliable service. The rubric enabling this clarity could be adapted for use in other business cases beyond outages, as well.

As a critical technology partner for enterprise-sized businesses, DYOPATH is excited to bring Altus Nova’s evaluation methodology into additional client relationships to ensure technology roadmaps are prioritized for best business impact, and to strengthen the consultancy’s relationships and results.

DYOPATH’s client agrees. Client leadership values a newfound ability to forecast technology’s impact on service provisioning and revenue capture and get full value from their relationship with DYOPATH. Justifying IT spending from a value-creation point of view allows them to set their course with confidence.

Altus Nova mentored DYOPATH’s client team members to use the rubric to guide roadmapping IT initiatives for both maintenance and innovation. DYOPATH and the client both appreciated Altus Nova’s ability to transfer critical knowledge, enable confident collaboration, and encourage self-service.