Spend Optimization Suite
Turn Your Strategy Into Reality
Utilities are confronted by the complex process of managing risk and planning mitigating investments subject to financial, resource, and regulatory constraints. They need solutions to assist with this process.
Spend Optimization Suite (SOS) delivers the help they need. It supports the Strategic Asset Management Planning process to deliver an optimized portfolio of capital and O&M spending plans.
It enables asset managers, planners, and other stakeholders to work together to analyze and fine tune investments while managing risk and budget.
SOS in a nutshell: Acquaint yourself with SOS with this short (< 2 minute) introductory video.
Find out how SOS can solve commonly seen investment planning problems with this (6 minute) video.
What You Can Achieve With SOS
Use Strategy to Drive Decisions
- Link Strategy to risk management and investment planning decisions
- Set priorities and adjust for sensitivity analyses and business changes
Build A Prioritized Risk Register & Long Term Asset Plans
- Create multi-year investment plans optimized across complex constraints – cost, resource, reliability, region, and more
- Compare scenario results side by side, drastically reducing analysis and discussion time
- Balance spend across regions/districts to focus on poor performers
- Reduce the common bias towards small projects
- Assess investments across fundamental viewpoints – value (benefit/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 – cost, resource, reliability, region, and more
- Compare scenario results side by side, drastically reducing analysis and discussion time
- Balance spend across regions/districts to focus on poor performers
- Reduce the common bias toward small projects
- Assess investments across fundamental viewpoints – value (benefit/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 – InfraShield Labs is both 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 InfraShield Labs 40+ SOS implementations at utilities worldwide. This is more than twice the number of clients of its major competitors combined
- Leverage InfraShield Labs for both its world-class SOS software solution and expert management consulting team
- Draw on InfraShield Labs 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:
%
Increase in spend approved by the regulator
%
Reduction in mandatory spend designations
%
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 & Scalable
- Modules can be purchased and implemented separately, allowing you to focus initially on your highest priority areas and grow the application with your business and data availability
- Connect to your AERO application for even 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 consistency across the organization in how individual projects will be 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% 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 & Multilingual
- Create multi-year investment plans optimized across complex constraints – cost, resource, reliability, region, and more
- Compare scenario results side by side, drastically reducing analysis and discussion time
- Balance spend across regions/districts to focus on poor performers
- Reduce the common bias toward small projects
- Assess investments across fundamental viewpoints – value (benefit/risk mitigation) and risk of deferral
- Better understand and reduce “must do” projects
In-house Implementation Expertise Worldwide
- InfraShield Labs is first and foremost a consulting company, where every implementation team member has experience in successful change management
- InfraShield Labs 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
- InfraShield Labs 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 the idea of maximizing value for the money spent. We’re confident the SOS provides the most “bang for your buck” of any solution in the market
Integrated
- Standardized flat-file upload functionality to batch import new or update existing data is included out of the box. The application creates a template which is immediately responsive to configuration changes. No need for IT, customized programming, or “black box” integration rules
- If you’d like something more direct, InfraShield Labs technical experts can work with you to accommodate customized import/export requirements with existing systems using various common integration approaches
International Standard Support (ISO55000)
- The SOS is aligned with and supports achievement of international standards such as PAS55 and ISO55000
- InfraShield Labs is both an endorsed IAM assessor and corporate member, and we bring this expertise to every implementation
Industries
Risk Management & Investment Planning Resources
Spend Optimization Suite (SOS) Overview Flyer
Spend Optimization Suite (SOS) Brochure
Talk to Our Experts Today
SOS Case Studies
Discover how we help clients achieve success.
