Fulfill legal compliance issues with Enterprise Archive

By David Arni (Industry Solutions Manager EMEA) and Philip Cleghorn (Industry Marketing Manager Resource Sector).

Utility organizations require fluid integration of all asset information— from asset information and engineering drawings to business plans and financial plans to customer account profiles and servicing records to regulatory requirements and historical compliance documents.

The nature of the utilities sector, with its profound physical and financial risks, makes compliance and eDiscovery top of mind for good reason.

In a  study by Fulbright & Jaworski , 22 percent² of energy companies reportedly had more than six regulatory proceedings brought against them and 15 percent³ of the energy sector was involved in one or more proceeding worth $20 million-a leading percentage for all industry sectors.

Rebecca Ptaszynski, an associate in the Commercial Litigation Group at Vedder Price, a general practice law firm, notes that a major concern for utility sector organizations is complying with the abundance of rules and regulations facing them at any given time. "From a legal perspective, when organizations are looking at retention periods and they are putting together records and information management policies, one of the biggest concerns that an energy company would face would be complying with regulatory and record retention requirements when they are faced with a large volume of litigation".

The underpinning solution that helps Utilities organization to fulfill their Legal requirements in many business processes is Records Management and a Content Archive. Open Text understands these needs for regulatory compliance and e-Discovery and offers customer solutions that lower costs and improve efficiency.

Asset Documentation and Processes

For utility generators and transmission & distribution companies, the ability to effectively manage resources and asset information has a direct-and far reaching-affect on their ability to deliver reliability, efficiency, and productivity while fulfilling legal compliance obligations. Ensuring reliability requires a sound Asset Information Management strategy.

Organizations commonly need to store and then easily access hundreds of thousands of engineering drawings, spreadsheets, and technical documents, some as old as the assets themselves.  And any one of them may need to be found at a moment's notice. Furthermore, it's vital to provide - and prove - comprehensive workforce guidance on correct process and procedures, many of which have profound implications for employee welfare and asset custodianship.  This is an enormous challenge when many organizations still rely on manual effort to locate key asset information from - in some cases - millions of documents.

An Enterprise Content Management (ECM) Archive is the fundamental underlying platform to store all kinds of information assets in a legally compliant manner. The Archive doesn't just keep information for historical or legal requirements - it' also supports business operations by delivering current operational information.  For example, a standard operating procedure must be stored and protected in the archive for legal reasons but is also an active resource, accessible for employees who need this crucial information in a timely manner.
Documentation relating to the Management of Change (MOC) is a further, ideal archive candidate. Management of Change (MOC) is one of the more challenging processes in a plant in terms of downtime, outages, resource, and risks regarding exposure to fines, lawsuits and negative publicity. Open Text Management of Change manages all the stages of an MOC lifecycle and related processes and documents, from single-screen initiation to archival under records management rules (Compliant with OSHA Process Safety Management Regulation 29CFR1910.119).

Smart Meter/Grid and Customer oriented processes

Of course, compliance disciplines extend beyond the Asset Management Domain.  Smart metering and the smart grid both have profound industry implications, for energy efficiency, customer service (marketing and customer acquisition) and cross-border energy management and trading - topics widely discussed throughout the industry. What seems less discussed is the topic of how to manage the sheer volume of data generated, ensuring availability all that need it, to manage its exponential growth and fully support future legal discovery.

At Open Text, we see critical questions emerging and believe electronic archiving will provide some key answers. What impact will collecting billions more readings have on existing systems? How can we maintain current system response times to employees and customers? How can we cost-effectively maintain data records for this hugely expanded level or scale of meter readings? Where end customers are involved, how and in what media should we present understandable billing data? How will we store all customer related information to fulfill legal and organizational requirements?

So how might an enterprise archive address such questions?

Firstly, scale suits the electronic archive, with its proven capability to handle truly huge data volumes. It can also do so 'intelligently', optimizing the balance between access performance and storage costs, driven by business policies. Of course, in a customer service environment, such data must be accessed rapidly, yet securely. So secondly, by placing information in the archive, access permission can be carefully controlled, ensuring electronic data security.

Thirdly, where customer meter readings are concerned, they need to be available in the broader customer context of contracts, bills, enquiries (through whatever channel) and even complaints; the archive can support retention and presentation of data - via ERP if required - in easy to understand formats.

The ideal situation is quick, easy access to all customer information across the customer's entire history with the organization. From the first relationship touch point, through changes in service offering and consumption levels to final disconnect. Additionally, in both regulated and deregulated markets, it's a legal requirement to store all incoming and outgoing correspondence for ten years.

Finally

Often success is measured in terms of the organization's ability to minimize costs and manage risk while delivering services excellence.  The underpinning foundation to achieving balance is a solid Enterprise Content Management and Archiving solution strategy, allowing the integration and streamlining of vast amounts of information to maximize profitability while delivering customer satisfaction and shareholder value with regulatory compliance.