The fol­low­ing Util­i­ty Voice was authored by Gibs Saint Paul, Senior Direc­tor of Infor­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy Ser­vices at Salt Riv­er Project. 

The util­i­ty indus­try is in the mid­dle of a mul­ti-pronged dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion, and near­ly every­one is going through it at the same time. That’s not yet a cause for cel­e­bra­tion; it’s in effect also a resource prob­lem, one that is only growing.

Over the last sev­er­al years, lead­ing Salt Riv­er Project’s Cus­tomer Mod­ern­iza­tion pro­gram has giv­en me a ground-lev­el view of this issue. The 24-month effort to replace our main­frame CIS with SAP S/4HANA on RISE con­sti­tutes the largest plat­form trans­for­ma­tion in SRP’s his­to­ry. As I step out of that posi­tion and into a broad­er role as Senior Direc­tor of Infor­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy Ser­vices, one thing remains unmis­tak­ably clear: what’s hap­pen­ing at SRP is hap­pen­ing everywhere.

CIS replace­ments, S/4HANA migra­tions, RISE with SAP, Ser­vice Cloud 2.0: pro­grams that would have been stag­gered across a decade are com­pressed into the same win­dow across the indus­try, run­ning in par­al­lel, chas­ing the same pool of qual­i­fied peo­ple to exe­cute them.

There are only so many con­sul­tants tru­ly equipped to do this work: the imple­men­ta­tion spe­cial­ists, PMO leads, QA prac­ti­tion­ers, and orga­ni­za­tion­al change experts who know these plat­forms and know util­i­ties. There are no A‑teams any­more. Every­one is stretched across too many engage­ments, and the util­i­ties absorb the con­se­quences: resources lost mid-stream, knowl­edge gaps at crit­i­cal moments, time­lines under pres­sure that were already unforgiving.

The deep­er truth is that the demand for peo­ple with this exper­tise has out­paced the sup­ply, and every util­i­ty run­ning a major trans­for­ma­tion right now is com­pet­ing for a nar­row­ing selec­tion of experts. We’ve lost peo­ple mid-pro­gram to com­pet­ing projects — I know oth­er util­i­ties relate.

Util­i­ties Are Bet­ter Posi­tioned Than They Think

This chal­lenge is a shared one to which the indus­try needs to respond delib­er­ate­ly. Each util­i­ty nav­i­gates the con­se­quences on its own, with­out step­ping back to rec­og­nize the struc­tur­al dynam­ic dri­ving it. But the util­i­ty indus­try already has what it would need to respond collectively.

In most sec­tors, peer col­lab­o­ra­tion at the lev­el we expe­ri­ence would be unusu­al. Here, it’s how the indus­try gen­uine­ly oper­ates, because the mis­sion is mutu­al: reli­able, afford­able water and pow­er for customers.

SRP meets with peer util­i­ties that are also going through trans­for­ma­tions once a month, not to exchange ven­dor pre­sen­ta­tions, but to talk plain­ly about what broke, how the team recov­ered, and what they’d do dif­fer­ent­ly. That kind of exchange is worth more than many knowl­edge-shar­ing forums, pre­cise­ly because it isn’t for­mal. If the hard lessons of work­ing through some­thing are already behind a util­i­ty six months ahead on an iden­ti­cal pro­gram, those lessons should trav­el. And util­i­ties that com­pare notes car­ry more weight with ven­dors than any sin­gle orga­ni­za­tion nego­ti­at­ing on its own.

When SRP fin­ish­es this pro­gram, the num­ber of util­i­ties that will want to under­stand what was learned will be con­sid­er­able. We’re in the util­i­ty indus­try. We help each oth­er. What that means is shar­ing the hard­er lessons along­side the suc­cess­es — the ones no ven­dor is posi­tioned to teach.

On SRP’s pro­gram alone, there are sep­a­rate ven­dors for the SI work, PMO, QA, and orga­ni­za­tion­al change man­age­ment, each with its own method­ol­o­gy, incen­tives, and def­i­n­i­tion of done. The coor­di­na­tion bur­den that comes with man­ag­ing all of it is what the indus­try hasn’t ful­ly reck­oned with, because the seams between work­streams are where pro­grams get into seri­ous trouble.

What the Pro­gram Doesn’t Teach You

No sin­gle solu­tion archi­tect can hold all of it. What’s required is delib­er­ate inter­nal struc­ture: prod­uct own­ers and solu­tion archi­tects with clear account­abil­i­ty across every lay­er, gov­er­nance capa­ble of keep­ing mul­ti­ple part­ners aligned to shared timelines.

Man­ag­ing the ven­dor land­scape is only one dimen­sion of the prob­lem. The oth­er is what hap­pens when the pro­gram ends, which, on cloud-based plat­forms, is less a fin­ish line than a hand­off to a dif­fer­ent kind of pres­sure. Major releas­es and new capa­bil­i­ties arrive quick­ly, and the busi­ness expects IT to be ready.

For SRP, mov­ing from the pro­gram mind­set that has defined this work into a ful­ly oper­a­tional one is the cen­tral chal­lenge of this next chap­ter: stay­ing close enough to the plat­form roadmap to guide busi­ness areas on what’s com­ing, well ahead of when they have to ask.

Join­ing SAP and ven­dor user groups is cen­tral to that. Util­i­ties doing this work at scale have a hard-won per­spec­tive on what these sys­tems need to do, and the right place for that per­spec­tive is at the table where the roadmap gets shaped.

At the end of the day, the simul­ta­ne­ous demands of the moment may feel over­whelm­ing at times, but our focus will stay trained on our com­mit­ment to our cus­tomers. Con­sid­er this: Our pre­pay pro­gram at SRP cov­ers rough­ly 150,000 cus­tomers, many man­ag­ing dif­fi­cult finan­cial sit­u­a­tions. When some­one makes a pay­ment after a dis­con­nec­tion, we want their pow­er to come back on in under a minute.

For the cus­tomer, the process­es behind that respon­sive­ness are invis­i­ble — yet that minute means every­thing. Keep­ing it intact, through a peri­od when every util­i­ty is stretched across the same trans­for­ma­tion at the same time, is a pri­or­i­ty that requires the indus­try to think collectively.

Qual­i­fied con­sul­tants are finite, and every util­i­ty in the sec­tor is com­pet­ing for them. The util­i­ty six months ahead on the same pro­gram, will­ing to share what went wrong, is one of the most valu­able resources in the room.

Share your sto­ry at SAP for Util­i­ties 2026 (Oct. 7 – 9, in San Anto­nio; reg­is­ter here). ASUG invites you to con­tribute to a dynam­ic, peer-led agen­da show­cas­ing real-world insights from the SAP ecosys­tem. Sub­mit your ses­sion pro­pos­al today!