Electric Power & Natural Gas.
Helping utilities and power-generation companies develop strategies to shape future growth, drive capital productivity, and perform operational transformations.
We help traditional utilities, renewable groups, and new entrants including start-ups, developers, oil majors, and power-generation companies accelerate sustainable and inclusive growth throughout the energy transition process by using digitization, automation, and AI to achieve lasting value and stay ahead of consumer trends and market dynamics.
How do we help clients?
Capital Projects
We help companies extract maximum value from capital budgets and generate superior returns for shareholders and ratepayers.
Capital programs in today's power industry must address regulatory uncertainty, increasing competition, mismatches between capital availability and demand, legacy mind-sets and practices, and the erosion of in-house technical expertise.
By turning capital excellence into a functional strength, companies can benefit from better-maintained assets, greater customer satisfaction, and higher shareholder returns.
What we do
We help clients with capital productivity in all business areas, project types, and stages: portfolio optimization, project concept and design, lean construction, contract and contractor management, contract close-out, and commissioning support.
- Strengthening the corporate portfolio - We help clients reassess the logic for allocating capital expenditure (capex) throughout the business and redesign planning and budgeting processes to link project funding to corporate strategy and value-creation potential.
- Supporting individual project development - On mega projects worth $1 billion or more, we help clients minimize risks to the balance sheet and boost net present value by up to 25 percent by improving project concept and setup. On small- and medium-size projects, we help create business cases, optimize concepts and designs, and streamline construction—delivering typical savings of 10 to 30 percent of the addressable budget.
- Working across the value chain - In generation, we provide end-to-end support on investment projects across all technologies and including building new power stations and refurbishment projects. In transmission, we help reduce costs, improve reliability, and increase customer affordability for large project portfolios; and optimize design, improve lands and rights processes, and implement lean-construction techniques in major time-critical corridor projects. In IT, we support utilities in capturing value by ensuring that projects meet business needs and are easy to transfer from the building phase to the operational phase.
Corporate Transformation
We help businesses succeed in increasingly competitive energy markets by developing their capabilities, transforming their performance, and building a culture of continuous improvement.
In a fast-changing industry, energy companies need to adopt new operating models, enter new markets and businesses, and capture new growth opportunities. We help them to design and implement large-scale change programs that will increase their flexibility, transform their performance, and revitalize their organizations.
We work closely with each client to develop a transformation program that meets their unique needs and leaves them better equipped to tackle future challenges and uncertainties. By engaging people at every level from the C-suite to frontline teams, we help clients to find better ways of working that are rooted in practical experience as well as innovative thinking.
Customer
We help utilities and retail energy suppliers develop innovative approaches that set new standards for service quality and customer satisfaction, while optimizing costs and commercial performance. Market liberalization, intensifying competition, new attackers, rising customer expectations, regulatory changes, and shifts in value pools are disrupting the energy industry and raising the bar for success. In this highly charged environment, we help companies achieve operational and commercial excellence by reengineering their activities to put customers at the core.
What we do
With Fijishi’s support, companies can:
- Improving service quality and customer satisfaction and cut cost by using digitization and lean operations to provide better, faster service and consistency across channels.
- Gaining new retail customers by offering tailored products, improving the channel mix, and providing innovative benefits that customers value.
Reducing churn in deregulated markets by personalizing touchpoints and combining advanced analytics with customer insight to preempt switching. - Realizing additional margin by identifying untapped growth opportunities, optimizing pricing and margins, and offering segment-specific services.
- Building customer experiences in solar and other distributed-energy resources to add new sources of revenue and meet emerging customer needs.
Digital & Advanced Analytics
We help energy clients transform into digital utilities by unlocking the value of advanced analytics, automation, mobile enablement, the cloud, design thinking, and agile.
Technological innovation, deregulation, slowing demand, and changing user expectations are opening up more and more opportunities for innovation, differentiation, and disruption in the utility sector and putting traditional operating models under stress.
Digital offers a new way of operating that optimizes performance across the entire value chain through step-change improvements in safety, customer satisfaction, compliance, reliability, and affordability.
Our work extends from quick, small-scale efforts—conducting a digital diagnostic or creating a functioning prototype to solve a business problem in a matter of weeks—to helping a utility reinvent its operations through agile working methods or build a whole new digital business from scratch.
How we work
We combine decades of service to the utility sector with extensive experience supporting leading companies from all industries as they rethink the art of the possible through digitization.
We are one of the world’s leading digital providers. We have more than 100 data analysts working across industries and capabilities, as well as Fijishi Digital Labs, with hundreds of product owners, architects, designers, and programmers who support our work with clients.
Drawing on our global client experience, we also develop advanced-analytics solution taking users to the leading edge of asset management and predictive maintenance. Such tool enables clients to optimize asset monitoring and inspection frequency, routine and corrective maintenance, and replacement decisions to deliver better uptime performance at lower cost.
Our digital expertise spans every step, from value-creation estimates, analytical modeling, and insight generation to rapid prototype development, “test and learn” pilots with customers, and final products. We work hand in hand with each client to source digital talent, build in-house capabilities, and create a digital enterprise fit for the energy future.
Midstream & Downstream Natural Gas
We help clients capture maximum value from the sourcing, wholesale marketing, retailing, transmission, distribution, and storage of natural gas and liquefied natural gas.
The natural gas industry presents complex challenges, from assessing the robustness of unconventional gas strategies in North America to evaluating the impact of liquefied natural gas (LNG) pricing on demand in Asia.
To navigate an unpredictable market, companies need a global perspective on the dynamics of the business, analytical rigor in weighing strategic options, and the flexibility to respond swiftly to shifts in supply, demand, regulatory context, and competitive behavior.
Procurement & Supply Management
We help utilities and independent power producers to become world-class purchasing leaders by adopting advanced procurement and supply-management capabilities across all materials, services, operating, and capital-spending categories.
As the world enters a technology-driven energy transition, energy enterprises will rely more and more on their procurement and supply-management capabilities to meet cost targets, secure supplies, improve safety and reliability, innovate, and optimize the total cost of ownership. Using our proven tools and approaches, we work hand in hand with clients to equip them for success in a challenging landscape.
We help clients unlock the potential from new value levers across all spend areas, and derisk and sustain value capture through advanced capabilities and techniques. We help them build operating models for the future based on effective cross-functional partnerships, and integrate emerging digital and analytical technologies to boost efficiency, generate insights, and uncover new opportunities. We also help them develop new skills, manage talent, and transform their culture and organization to achieve industry-leading performance and long-term impact.
Renewable Energy & New Downstream
We help clients navigate the global energy transition; plan and implement solar, wind, storage, biomass, geothermal, waste-to-energy, and hydropower systems; and optimize operations across the value chain.
As technology costs fall and environmental concerns grow, renewable-energy systems offer more and more opportunities for incumbents and new entrants alike. We work with organizations across the energy sector—utilities, developers, investors, tech companies, government bodies, and regulators—as they shape strategy, improve operations, and capture value.
We also support clients with specific challenges, ranging from capital productivity and investment to digital and analytics and from restructuring to energy policy and regulation. The deep expertise of our leadership team and practitioners is backed by an unparalleled global network of consultants and specialists with cutting-edge knowledge of industry, functional, and cross-sector topics.
Strategy & Risk
We help utilities, investors, and governments to take well-informed strategic and financial decisions and execute in a rapidly evolving and increasingly volatile energy environment.
As the utility sector grows more complex, we help our clients tackle the opportunities and challenges presented by the transition to a decarbonized society, the growth of renewables, pressure from new entrants, and ongoing market liberalization and reform.
What we do
- Developing corporate strategy - We identify growth opportunities in a fast-changing sector and enhance processes for decision making and review.
- Understanding market outlooks - We assess how power markets, technologies, and value pools are evolving and develop insights to inform portfolio planning, asset valuation, and investment.
- Building an agile utility - We help clients make decisions in days rather than months, doubling value-added work time, spreading innovation throughout the organization, and increasing frontline productivity by as much as 25 percent.
- Assessing regulatory scenarios based on value at stake - We help clients define national energy strategies, understand market reforms, and make their businesses more resilient to regulatory change.
- Improving trading and energy management - We work to optimize commercial activities and organizational structures, using advanced analytic techniques to optimize risk and return profiles, and build capabilities to benefit customers and the business.
Thermal Power Generation
We help electric-power generators enhance revenue, reduce costs, and transform fleet performance. As lower gas prices, constrained demand, tighter environmental controls, and shifts to renewable energy combine to exert pressure on generators’ margins, operational excellence is at a premium.
Our comprehensive approach helps clients simultaneously improve plant performance, strengthen central procurement, and optimize capital portfolios. To maximize impact, we help clients address all value levers at the plant level: revenue, commercial optimization, fixed cost, and variable cost, including fuel cost. We embed capability building into project design so that clients increasingly rely on their own resources as the program is scaled up, and our support is gradually reduced from one wave to the next.
What we do
We work with many of the power-generation fleets to secure lasting improvements in frontline operations. We help our clients develop capabilities to build a strong foundation for performance excellence. We provide access to an unparalleled global network of specialists who have deep expertise and hands-on experience in the power industry, lean operations, and energy efficiency.
- Frontline plant operations - Our distinctive field-tested process, supported by learning modules, IT packages, and lean techniques, helps clients identify improvement opportunities, generate and evaluate ideas, set priorities, and track results. We tailor each program to the relevant generation technology—fossil, hydro, or nuclear—targeting heat rates, individual productivity, and outage times.
- Portfolio and operational risk management - By following our systematic approach to evaluating risks and returns, clients can make better decisions on sourcing mix, the wholesale/retail balance, long-term versus short-term sales, and hedging programs. We help clients align commercial and operating incentives to capture opportunities and drive sustained impact.
- Performance transformation - Our pragmatic emphasis on value creation enables clients to capture operational gains quickly, adjust performance in real time, and track progress effectively. To ensure that transformation delivers continuous improvement, we focus on long-term shifts in mind-sets and behaviors as well as short-term performance gains.
Transmission & Distribution
We help electric- and gas-network owners and operators achieve world-class operating- and capital-expenditure performance, create value from emerging technologies, and meet the growing need for reliable, affordable energy.
Over the next 20 years, emerging countries will need to expand their power networks rapidly to serve growing populations. Meanwhile, developed economies will need to upgrade aging infrastructure, implement smart grids, and respond to mounting regulatory, customer, and technological pressures.
To meet demand, the world’s transmission and distribution lines will need to increase by more than a third to an estimated 94 million kilometers by 2035, with an estimated cost of more than $310 billion per year.
What we do
We help gas and electric utilities develop and execute critical strategic decisions, from prioritizing asset-management investments to applying the latest digital and advanced-analytics thinking to energy delivery. In addition, we advise utility-service providers and technology manufacturers on strategy, serve financial investors through evaluations and due diligence, and support public-sector institutions and their partners with policy design.
- Developing safe, reliable, and affordable frontline operations - We use proprietary tools and lean methods to help clients reduce operating expenditures while improving safety, reliability, and customer service. Grid operators can capture savings of 10 to 25 percent in frontline operations, engineering planning, work scheduling, and supply-chain optimization.
- Realizing digitally enabled effectiveness and efficiency - We help clients develop and implement cutting-edge digital and analytics tools to transform consumer and supplier journeys, enable their distributed workforce digitally, automate manual work processes, improve maintenance and inspections planning and execution, and introduce real-time outage tracking and incident reporting.
- Leading innovation and the grid of the future - We help operators manage evolving layers of devices and services in grid networks and move from one-way to more variable two-way electricity flow, which requires more advanced scenario-based planning combined with real-time data management and cyberrisk mitigation.
- Achieving continuous improvement through capability building - We work with clients to develop training programs and academies that nurture high-performing leaders and establish best practices that are sustained and embedded throughout the organization.
Water & Waste
We help private- and public-sector clients manage water and waste to capture economic and social benefits, reduce cost, and minimize risk. Growth in the world’s population, cities, and GDP is putting acute pressure on water supply and waste disposal. By 2030 the global gap between water supply and demand could reach 40 percent. Today almost three-quarters of the world’s waste ends up in landfill, imposing enormous environmental costs and squandering opportunities to extract value through recycling and reuse.
What we do
- Developing water-management programs - We help local and national governments assemble a fact base for decision making, craft strategies for stakeholder management, identify least-cost solutions through tailored cost curves, assess barriers and payback times, and produce practical implementation plans. For one country facing acute scarcity, we identified demand-management solutions that would cover four-fifths of its supply gap at no cost and helped rethink its agricultural strategy to build a water-efficient economy.
- Transforming water and waste utilities - We help utilities transform their operations along the entire value chain of water, waste, and wastewater by optimizing elements such as network and pump-station maintenance, pump energy efficiency, sludge treatment, waste asset configuration, aeration control, and support functions. With our assistance, a water utility recently identified savings worth 25 percent of operating costs at one of its treatment plants.
- Digital water - Digital has become one of the most important issues in the water industry, with the potential to completely alter market dynamics. We support clients in understanding the strategic imperatives of the municipal water market and developing a comprehensive analysis of the competitive landscape. We helped one client, at the cutting edge of the water sector, use digital storyboards to identify growth opportunities that would enable it to lead the smart-water-digitization market.
- Optimizing industrial operations - We work with industrial companies to manage the costs and risks of water consumption and find solutions to water challenges beyond their own four walls. We have helped companies identify double-digit potential savings in indirect water costs and supported industrial operators attempting to secure reliable and sustainable water supplies. For companies striving to eliminate waste from their operations, we advise on identifying pain points, saving resources in the supply chain, and adapting product design to reduce materials requirements in manufacture.
- Identifying profitable investment strategies - Although the $500 billion water market is growing fast and presents many opportunities for investment, profitable and addressable niches are hard to find. We help conduct technology and target scans for investors and entrants from adjacent businesses and offer guidance on developing entry strategies, capturing opportunities, and building scale. For one client we recently designed a road map to implement a strategy that put it on a double-digit growth path. We offer similar services to investors interested in extracting value from waste.
- Capturing the potential of waste-services provision - We provide insights into the performance and costs of existing and emerging waste technologies and help public-sector organizations develop and refine integrated waste-management strategies. We also help national and local governments assess how recycled materials might contribute to resource-management strategies and economic-development targets.
- Revolutionizing products and systems - Most production and consumption systems in industrialized economies rely on the one-time use of resources. Only 20 out of 60 metals, for example, have an end-of-life recycling rate of 25 percent or more. We help companies devise product strategies and business models that capitalize on the enormous advantages offered by “closed loop” production and consumption systems, such as secure long-term access to resources.