FORTUNE 100 ELECTRIC UTILITY CASE STUDY
- Jul 14, 2024
- 2 min read
BUSINESS PROBLEM
A Fortune 100 electric utility had built a suite of Power BI dashboards to track its compliance with NERC-CIP (North American Electric Reliability Corporation Critical Infrastructure Protection) standards. The dashboards captured the right information, but they had been designed by an information security expert rather than a Power BI specialist. As a result, performance was suboptimal and the level of effort required to refresh and maintain the dashboards as new compliance data arrived was unsustainable for the team responsible for them. The provider needed the dashboards reengineered so they would run efficiently and remain manageable over time, without losing the security domain expertise that had gone into the original design.
SCALESOLOGY IN ACTION
The engagement called for two skill sets that rarely sit in the same firm: deep Power BI and data and analytics expertise, and hands-on knowledge of NERC-CIP. Scalesology brought both. Rather than rebuild the dashboards from scratch, which would have discarded the security expertise already embedded in them, Scalesology made surgical fixes to the existing reports, optimizing data models, refresh logic, and visual structure where performance and maintenance pain points were most acute. Each change was made with an eye on what the dashboards were actually tracking, so NERC-CIP fidelity was preserved at every step.
In parallel, Scalesology architected a longer-term data management plan to support the provider's roadmap for future dashboard improvements: a sound data foundation, clear ownership of pipelines and sources, and a structure that would let analysts add new compliance metrics without rebuilding what already worked.
RESULT
The impact was immediate and measurable. Dashboard refresh performance improved by 50%, giving the compliance team faster access to the data they needed. The effort required to maintain the dashboards dropped to less than 10% of what it had previously taken, freeing the team to focus on compliance work rather than dashboard upkeep. Audit preparation time was reduced by more than 80%, a significant operational gain for a regulated utility where audit readiness is a continuous requirement.
With the data management plan in hand, the provider also had a clear path forward for future enhancements, confident that subsequent dashboard work would build on a sustainable foundation rather than compound the maintenance burden. The engagement demonstrated the value of pairing data and analytics depth with security domain expertise: the dashboards stayed faithful to NERC-CIP requirements while becoming dramatically easier to operate, maintain, and extend.
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