Moving Towards Sustainability
In a movement toward sustainability, most organizations are working toward becoming more energy efficient and less reliant on natural gas. There is a lot more work to be done in this area for many Fortune 100 companies. A leading utility company is staying on top of this trend and working tirelessly to scale their EV charging sites from their current 10+ charging stations across 5 states to an impressive 100-300 charging sites.
“How is this utility company planning to achieve such rapid expansion?” you might ask. Perficient, in close collaboration with the organization, enters the scene right from the preliminary design phases. One critical aspect of this collaboration is working on the Asbuilt form, an extremely detailed chart that outlines all the geospatial information required by contractors to proceed. This meticulous design process ensures compliance with state requirements for electrical lines and serves as a crucial foundation for the scaling of EV charging stations.
Supply Chain Insights and Standardization
Outsourcing the business processes in the supply chain has often resulted in a lack of insight into progress and inventory management. To solve this problem, Perficient has developed various resources and strategies. An internal dashboard provides metrics for performance management and enhances visibility within the supply chain. Additionally, Perficient’s capitalization time study enables the utility company to categorize efforts in product development as capitalized expenditure, streamlining cost control. By partnering with project managers responsible for EV sites, reporting cadence and metrics are established, facilitating efficient procurement and supply chain functions. Through these actions, we are able to ensure that the company is starting off its scaling on the right foot.
Construction on sites was taking up a large amount of time. To solve this problem, we needed to lessen the construction time and standardize the ordering process. By standardizing and forecasting, we were able to take the next step into demand planning, and alignment with the energy company’s larger capital targets. By internalizing these processes, not only is the organization able to gain insight into its progress, but they are also able to control costs more effectively.
The Future of Supply Chain
The future of supply chain is bright, especially with the help of third-party logistics providers. When a company uses a third-party logistics provider (3PL), they are trusting a third party that specializes in the industry to work between the entities of what the business wants to happen, how the contractors are implementing it, being the middleman to house their products, and distributing them from the final mile to the construction site. This is great in theory, but relying solely on 3PLs can limit an organizations visibility into the status of their operations.
By bringing in virtual warehousing, corporations are able to gain insight into all these systems, especially into the ordering capability of the 3PLs, which allows for a strengthened visibility component.
Another facet of future supply chain expansion is asset tagging. This utility company is currently working on establishing an internal system for asset management, while also centralizing standardization and cataloging on a dedicated web page. This trend of consolidating outsourced processes and moving towards internalization is expected to continue shaping the supply chain industry.
In lieu of the sustainability trends, the energy company has made significant strides toward scaling their EV charging states and making them more accessible to the public. With a considerable focus on the standardization of processes via tools such as an internal dashboard and a capitalization time study, Perficient’s supply chain experts were instrumental in creating a successful scaling plan to spring into action.
Stay tuned to learn more about our work with this utility corporation and future supply chain trends.
