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Why UI Solutions Group

Our expert consultants help you implement UI solutions based on best practices and our deep industry experience and expertise

The #1 Reason to Choose UI Solutions Group is Our People

With decades of combined experience in the utility industry, including executive leadership, accounting, tax, planning, auditing, rate making, regulatory strategy, filings, and expert witness testimony before public utility commissions, the UI Team is here to help you solve your toughest challenges. Our talented software engineers deliver industry-leading functionality, while our consulting staff configure implementations to meet clients’ distinct objectives while sharing industry best practices.

“Our partnership with UI sets the bar pretty high for any relationship with a vendor.
They are a true partner. If we are successful, they are successful.”
UI Customer

The Difference Our Consultants Make

OTHER SOLUTIONS

You’re on your own. Good luck out there!

Take a guess

Buy the solution that suits what you think you need.

DIY

Buy the implementation package.

Please hold

Work with 3rd party system integrators or sub-contractors who may not have industry experience.

Workflow frustration

Onboard your employees to a non-tailored solution and watch for new and exciting workarounds.

UI SOLUTIONS GROUP

We’re with you every step of the way.

Your unique needs

Receive one-on-one business case and needs assessment support.

Choose what’s best for you

Buy the solution(s) with the modules you need, or the fully integrated ERP.

Boost efficiency

Have confidence that utility industry best practices are already configured into your solutions.

Be supported

Work with U.S. based professional consultants with deep utility knowledge and expertise to configure implementations to meet your needs while sharing industry best practices to address your unique challenges.

Resources at your fingertips

Leverage our project management, change management, and process design services to drive a successful transition.

Success!

Go-live seamlessly with our production migration and go-live support.

“UI Consultants are one of UISolution Group’s greatest resources.”

UI Customer

And...

After you go live, you can count on our talented software engineers to deliver industry-leading functionality.

Product upgrades and new releases

Post-production hyper-care support

Software
maintenance

Excellent
training

SaaS hosting and support services

“I am extremely grateful for the extra high level of service you guys provide. It is the same level of effort I expect my team to put forth when we get requests from our internal clients.”

UI Customer

Discover why UI Solutions is the right tool for accurate forecasting, improved strategic decision-making and more.

UISolutions vs. Conventional Software

More Reasons to Choose UISolutions Group

Explore our client success stories to see our benefits in action.

BE MORE STRATEGIC BY

Shortening response time to what-if questions

Client success stories:

Supporting both top-down and bottom-up planning

Client success stories:

STRENGTHEN YOUR ECONOMICS BY

Assessing potential future outcomes

Client success stories:

Improving controls over revenue and costs

Client success stories:

GET MORE PRODUCTIVE WITH LESS EFFORT BY

Reducing clerical time and increasing analysis time

Client success stories:

Avoiding redundant efforts caused by overlapping tools and processes

Client success stories:

Empowering analysts to easily change logic and adapt to business changes

Client success stories:

Capturing business knowledge to reduce the risk of employee turnover impacting critical planning processes

INCREASE ACCURACY AND TRUST BY

Sharing knowledge through transparent calculations

Client success stories:

© 2024 Utilities International, Inc.
dba UI Solutions Group
150 N. Riverside Plaza
 Chicago, Illinois 60601
 Phone: 312-580-6200
 Fax: 312-580-6212
 Transparency in Coverage Rule
CLIENT SUCCESS 2 Anticipating Tax Law Change Impact

Challenge

Confronting material changes to tax rates and rules, our client’s forecasts needed to include scenarios accurately reflecting the anticipated impact. However, correctly forecasting fixed asset deductions requires many records of data and complex rules. Their tax accounting systems were too slow to forecast multiple years and spreadsheets wouldn’t be able to handle the requisite detail.

Solution

  • UI Solutions Group's Integrations were configured to import fixed asset tax return results from the client's tax accounting system.
  • Our Plant Tax calculations precisely followed established tax rules and methods, including ARAM. UI Solutions Group's in-memory processing enabled the client to quickly and accurately forecast its existing and projected assets to determine the impact of the tax rate change on current and deferred tax expense and deferred tax balances.
  • UI Solutions Group's Pivot Reporting was leveraged to summarize results for analysis, comparisons, and presentations.

Impact

Implementing UI Solutions Group's Plant Tax solution allowed the utility to quickly estimate the impact of the tax rate changes and develop its best course of action for customers, shareholders, and regulators.

CLIENT SUCCESS 2 Setting Regulatory Strategy

Challenge

Producing an accurate forecast of revenue deficiency proved challenging for our client’s outdated regulatory systems. It was critical to know when to file and how much additional revenue was needed in order to improve rate case outcomes, but they lacked the tools to quickly forecast and evaluate strategic scenarios.

Solution

  • UI Solutions Group's Strategic Modeling solution enabled our client to model regulatory results over a five-year period providing the detail needed to set regulatory strategy.
  • Integrating actual and forecast data from multiple enterprise systems, user spreadsheets, and manual inputs proved critical to defining a regulatory system of record.
  • The web-based dashboarding functionality allowed management to run dozens of ad-hoc scenarios quickly, showing incremental results to their base case for rate base, revenue deficiency, and return across their jurisdictions.

Impact

Drastically improved forecast accuracy and timely what-if scenarios allowed management to be confident of potential rate case outcomes and make better rate case filing decisions that minimized lost revenues.

CLIENT SUCCESS 1 Communicating Customer Impacts

Challenge

Facing incomplete stories in the local press, our client was under intense pressure to clarify customer impacts of a proposed rate change. However, existing tools limited analysts to modeling rate impacts in aggregate, leaving them unable to guarantee that proposed rates would not cause undue rate shock to specific customer segments or key accounts.

Solution

  • UI Solutions Group's integrated rate design library and tariff calculation engine provided instantaneous access to proposed pricing and comprehensive bill impact analysis prior to the filing.
  • Segmentation capabilities allowed reporting impacts by customer group and other key segments.
  • Browser-based customer dashboards gave account managers user-friendly access to explanatory graphs and reports with full drilldown transparency into each calculated charge.

Impact

UI Solutions Group's functionality allowed account managers to begin their customer outreach with key accounts concurrent with the rate case filing. Prompt and accurate information promoted key account confidence, supported customer satisfaction, and led to a smooth rate case and settlement process.

CLIENT SUCCESS 2 Executing Multidimensional Planning

Challenge

With their existing high-level planning module, frequent and material variances from forecast were making it hard for our client to predict their financial position in the future and to communicate this to senior management and other stakeholders.

Solution

  • UI Solutions Group's Multidimensional Model provided the ability to actualize and forecast at sub-ledger detail, tracking additional ledger dimensions including cost element, planning order, and plant account.
  • The Multidimensional Model produced fully allocated and balanced financial statements by business unit and regulatory filing.
  • The additional dimensions in the Model supported automated cash and earning walks which clarified the reason behind every variance.

Impact

Automating variance report creation at the detailed level enabled analysts to isolate variance drivers, greatly improving explanations to senior management. Accurate variance explanations improved strategic decision-making and forecast accuracy.

CLIENT SUCCESS 1 Transforming to Performance-Based Budgeting

Challenge

Our client wanted to shift from traditional baseline budgeting practices to performance-based methods, enabling managers to focus on value produced and not just money spent

Solution

  • The module was configured to allow users to budget by units-of-work, which the system transformed into proper accounting while applying centrally managed rules for unit pricing, labor balancing, loadings, and allocations.
  • When planned work was already maintained in another system, integrations were established with these work-management databases, avoiding duplicate data entries.
  • The monthly import of actual results allowed the system to produce performance measuring analytics, including: price, labor and material efficiencies, and earned value reporting.

Impact

Our client’s budgeting process was transformed from a traditional baseline process to a robust cost model that provided bottom-up cost justifications for rate cases, explained cost variances, and gauged operational performance.

CLIENT SUCCESS 1 Evaluating Multiple Capital Recovery Programs

Challenge

In the utility industry, an optimized capital program is critical to financial performance and regulatory recovery. Our client’s management needed multiple scenarios evaluated in detail to choose the best path forward. However, their spreadsheet process was so labor-intensive, error-prone, and time-consuming that it was difficult for them to analyze multiple capital investment options in a timely manner.

Solution

  • Implementing UI Solutions Group's Plant Book and Plant Tax solutions allowed the utility to efficiently process various capital forecasts, providing quick comparisons of plant accounting outcomes.
  • The powerful Calculation Rules Engine allows UI Solutions Group's Plant Book to accurately emulate actual, per-book, and plant accounting calculation rules and methodologies.
  • Our flexible interface technology made it easy to import actual recorded plant data, keeping the forecasts up-to-date.

Impact

Using UI Solutions Group's Plant Book and Plant Tax, the utility was able to settle on the optimal capital program that met the company financial goals and the needed transparency for regulatory recovery.

CLIENT SUCCESS 2 Preventing Revenue Erosion

Challenge

Looking to leverage their advanced metering infrastructure (AMI), our client was exploring new time-of-use rates but was concerned high customer adoption could cause significant revenue loss. Confronted with massive volumes of smart-meter data, analysts lacked sufficient tools to effectively model revenue migration.

Solution

  • UI Solutions Group's analyst-driven calculation editor enabled modeling of experimental TOU tariffs and billing determinants over 15-minute interval meter reads.
  • Proposed pricing from the integrated rate design library was used to rapidly re-calculate all customer bills across all tariff options, identifying the new best-fit rate for each account.
  • User-defined migration rules determined the specific accounts expected to adopt new time-of-use rate options and the precise resulting impact on revenue.

Impact

The utility leveraged its analysis to obtain fair and accurate revenue recovery which incorporated multiple time-of-use options, meeting customer and commission goals, while maintaining a high degree of confidence in the stability of future revenues.

CLIENT SUCCESS 3 Designing Better Rates

Challenge

With growing penetration of distributed solar across their service territory, one of our clients was seeking to increase fixed charges while avoiding adverse customer impacts that might hinder rate approval. However, existing tools limited analysts to modeling rate impacts in aggregate, leaving them unable to guarantee proposed rates would meet this objective across the entire customer population.

Solution

  • UI Solutions Group's flexible rate design tools applied analyst inputs and system calculated billing determinants to re-allocate revenue from variable to fixed charges, while maintaining target revenue by customer-class.
  • The integrated in-memory tariff engine rapidly re-calculated all customer bills using test-year usage across multiple proposed pricing scenarios.
  • Powerful frequency distribution analysis identified customer segments with disproportionate bill increases, allowing rapid revision of rate design to smooth impacts while maintaining target outcomes.

Impact

Our client was able to design prices that they could confidently demonstrate would not unfairly affect any customers, ensuring higher customer satisfaction while addressing commission concerns.

CLIENT SUCCESS 3 Analyzing Regulatory Leakage

Challenge

Our client’s regulatory return on equity relative to their financial return was lagging, and without a more detailed system, they were left to impose top-side changes to their expense and capital forecast. This approach lacked the requisite detail to identify and correct specific problem areas.

Solution

  • UI Solutions Group's ROE Reconciliation Analysis Framework provided the ability to calculate the differences in financial and regulatory return at the lowest level of detail.
  • Driver-based analysis allowed analysts to define leakage points such as allocations, averaging methods, and capital structure differences.
  • Standard reports allowed managers to see leakage at varying levels in the ROE calculation.

Impact

The client was able to determine precisely what was contributing to the lower regulatory ROE and make strategic decisions to improve the loss. Better information about the sources of leakage helped the company’s regulatory affairs department work with commissions to suggest changes to the jurisdictional rules.

CLIENT SUCCESS 1 Automating Monthly Forecasts

Challenge

A lengthy financial forecasting process impacted our client’s ability to respond quickly to management’s business needs. Their skilled analysts labored — collecting forecasts from other departments, layering in newly available actual data, and relying on trial and error — to target key business objectives, such as determining a capitalization forecast that would satisfy regulatory constraints.

Solution

  • UI Solutions Group's Financial Module integrated with the client’s ERP and plant accounting systems to automate the actualization process.
  • The system's browser-based data interface enabled other departments to directly enter their forecast data, freeing financial analysts from data collection tasks.
  • The system’s fast processing engine and powerful iterative goal-seeking logic allowed for automated financing and convergence of regulatory constraints.

Impact

A much faster and automated monthly forecasting process allowed the team to spend more time analyzing drivers and improving their forecast, and less time on manual data management.

CLIENT SUCCESS 3 Achieving a Rolling Forecast

Challenge

Our client’s leadership demanded a rolling forecast to provide more accurate guidance to financial markets and enable operations to make more informed decisions.

Solution

  • Our Budgeting solution captured their business rules and offline spreadsheets in an online collaborative workspace, reducing the need for manual analyst interaction during the reforecasting process.
  • UI Solutions Group's enterprise integration layer pulled in data from other systems, eliminating data entry tasks.
  • The Rules Engine transformed imported work-planning assumptions into the required accounting format and automated the application of labor pricing, loadings, and allocation rules.

Impact

The utility was able to automate most of the monthly reforecast effort and shift low-value clerical time to high-value analytical time. In the process, they reduced the time and cost associated with developing the annual budget, improved the accuracy of the budget/forecast, and achieved the rolling forecast objective.

CLIENT SUCCESS 4 Automating Regulatory Accounting

Challenge

Frequent issues with our client’s regulatory clause system resulted in delays in the close process and inaccurate postings to their accounting system of record. The system lacked the flexibility to handle the data inconsistencies and the agility to turn around a result within a tight two-day window.

Solution

  • UI Solutions Group's SOX-compliant Regulatory solution provided the ability to integrate to the ERP source data, shortening the actualization process significantly and increasing flexibility by automatically adding projects, accounts, and other data with integrated error checking.
  • Analysts were able to use the system to produce a full set of standard reports to clarify calculated results and highlight new unmapped data items for a secure user group.
  • Posting entries to the ERP system became an automated, monthly process once results were analyzed and approved.

Impact

The streamlined actualization process and fast processing time significantly increased the team’s ability to efficiently review the details, helping to mitigate errors and avoid costly rework.

CLIENT SUCCESS 3 Collaborating in a Data Platform

Challenge

In performing routine monthly analyses, our client frequently faced limitations with their spreadsheet-based financial modeling solution. As Excel power-users, analysts valued spreadsheet functionality. Still, their need to address large datasets, collaborate on multiple scenarios, and eliminate accounting errors meant they had outgrown a spreadsheet-based approach.

Solution

  • UI Solutions Group's Financial Module processed complex calculations over several years of detailed actual and forecast data while achieving much faster run times than their previous model.
  • Our dual-entry accounting and flexible planning ledger allowed the client to build financial statements at the SEC line-item level, producing consistent and accurate financial statements.
  • The secure and collaborative platform provided data editing and reporting in Excel and a spreadsheet-like Calculation Editor where analysts could manage formulas, making the Excel experts comfortable on day one.

Impact

Analysts were no longer constrained by data volumes, processing complexity, or tools best suited for a single user. The need for change management was minimized, as the best aspects of their spreadsheet-based tools were maintained. The new process allowed the team to work concurrently and eliminated the burden of manually ensuring a correct set of financials.

CLIENT SUCCESS 3 Consolidated Financial Forecasting

Challenge

Due to a recent merger, our client needed to achieve consistency across the newly combined companies by consolidating their financial systems. However, each legacy company had unique best practices regarding plant accounting forecasts that couldn’t be immediately abandoned. A system would be required with sufficient flexibility to support the varying practices while simultaneously producing an accurate and consistent consolidated view.

Solution

  • UI Solutions Group's Plant Book and Plant Tax solution was installed enterprise-wide providing standardized calculations and consolidated reporting of plant accounting forecasts across the enterprise.
  • Interfaces with the general ledger, plant accounting, and tax accounting systems followed a consistent methodology across companies.
  • UI Solutions Group's administrator-defined user interfaces and a highly customizable Workflow Framework enabled the different companies to each retain their legacy business processes without compromising consistent corporate results.

Impact

The combined enterprise achieved an efficient process to gather capital project data and apply standardized calculations, achieving consistent and consolidated plant accounting and tax forecasts. At the same time the semi-autonomous entities were able to retain the proven business processes that best suited their unique cultures.

CLIENT SUCCESS 2 Improving Transparency and Speed

Challenge

Our client’s inability to accurately reflect the complex and multi-step service company allocation rules in their 10-year budget made them vulnerable to regulatory scrutiny. Their previous process lacked transparency and, even when systematized, took way too long to run.

Solution

  • UI Solutions Group's Allocation Integration Framework read in their exact allocation rules from their general ledger.
  • The In-Memory Rules Engine processed the 120 monthly budget periods in real-time, exactly emulating the actual-period allocations processed by the GL.
  • The powerful Pivot Reporting tool provided drillable results, making the allocation process clear and transparent.Standard reports allowed managers to see leakage at varying levels in the ROE calculation.

Impact

With full transparency provided to target organizations, management was able to achieve their defendable and efficiently-produced 10-year fully allocated budget.

CLIENT SUCCESS 1 Improving Filing Accuracy and Credibility

Challenge

Confronted with a disallowed rate case caused by errors in a recent filing, our client was directed by management to eliminate errors and win back the confidence of their commissions. However, their filing system provided little transparency or security in the data and calculations, which made auditing their filing package very difficult.

Solution

  • The UI Solutions Group's Regulatory module’s multidimensional calculations and reporting provided management with the ability to produce accurate and auditable regulatory results.
  • The system’s editable logic and formula drilldown created a completely transparent user experience, giving analysts the ability to validate results.
  • UI Solutions Group's automated and ready-to-file Excel Working Model package — including filing schedules, workpapers, and data requests that satisfied commission requirements – avoided the need for manual intervention prior to filing.

Impact

The utility streamlined the time to file a rate case, with improved accuracy that, in turn, improved credibility with the commission. Automated calculations and filing schedules enabled the client’s regulatory staff to do more analyses and make changes as necessary.