Ensuring accurate quarterly Federal Energy Regulatory Compliance (FERC) reports is essential for utilities. But the effort involved is significant: importing data from legacy systems, formatting it into spreadsheets, and carefully reviewing copy-and-pasted data to complete the required forms. It’s tedious, time-intensive work and it can lead to costly errors if not managed effectively.
The good news? If you’re familiar with common errors, it’s a whole lot easier to avoid them. That’s why, in this post, we’ve identified 10 of the most common compliance reporting pitfalls. That way, you can avoid them.
They are:
- Underestimating reporting complexity: Utilities are required to report on data across many different categories. These areas include customer energy consumption, infrastructure maintenance, and grid performance. Many utilities underestimate the challenge of managing and accessing this information in a timely way to support quarterly FERC compliance reporting needs.
- Maintaining data silos: Often this data is stored in multiple different systems. This means utilities spend a significant amount of time collecting and synthesizing information to prepare FERC filings and other compliance reports. Dependence on a patchwork of systems can also impact data integrity and accuracy, and even expose utilities to potential cyber security threats.
- Lack of compliance reporting automation: While the use of legacy technology systems creates potential data integrity and security issues, it also limits basic workflow and reporting automation capabilities that can save tons of time. Without tools to automate tasks like mapping data to the correct fields on a FERC form, staff needs to spend time copying and pasting data from spreadsheets.
- Manual data validation: Many utilities still rely on tedious manual reviews to check for data accuracy and completeness. This traditional approach comes with severe limitations. Mainly, it slows down the reporting process and takes staff time away from other important tasks. But it’s also prone to human error, which can lead to costly fines and other penalties
- Insufficient stakeholder engagement: To produce comprehensive, accurate compliance reports on schedule, managers need to ensure efficient collaboration between different departments. One common mistake involves not adequately preparing or setting expectations with stakeholders from these groups. This includes providing clear communication on the information needed from each department, document review processes, and standard timelines for each step in the process.
- Not seeking legal or regulatory guidance: FERC regulations can be complex and nuanced. Tapping external experts for advice when needed can help utilities address questions throughout the filing process to ensure compliance.
- Overlooking internal training needs: Inadequate training for staff on the latest compliance updates can lead to oversights and errors. This includes making sure staff are fully trained and aligned on internal processes for preparing, reviewing, and finalizing documents.
- Inadequate version control: Without a well-defined plan for how to track and manage changes to files, it’s nearly impossible to avoid mistakes throughout the reporting process. Utilities need to make sure their teams have a clear understanding of the procedures for accessing and checking out shared documents, making edits, and leaving other kinds of feedback for their colleagues.
- Lack of archiving: Failure to keep detailed records of past communications, filings, and related documentation is a missed opportunity for many utilities. This historical information can serve as an invaluable resource during the filing process and can also be referenced to show a track record of compliance in the case of an audit.
- Missing deadlines: There are different deadlines for each type of FERC filing and these dates can vary from year to year. It’s vital to confirm submission due dates well in advance to avoid potential financial and legal actions resulting from submission delays.
Fortunately, avoiding these and other mistakes is easier than ever. The biggest step that utilities can take is to evaluate the need for a centralized digital compliance platform. Adopting a platform like HData can help companies ease data collection and analysis, add rigor and automation to document management tasks, and facilitate stronger cross-team collaboration.
Want to talk to our team about how to get started? Reach out.