Seeing the Bigger Picture: NEU streamlines NERC compliance with enterprise-wide vision

Seeing the Bigger Picture NEU* streamlines NERC compliance with enterprise-wide vision *Organization name has been changed

Big electric utility companies have a lot to juggle today: keeping the lights on, protecting the environment, and demonstrating transparency and compliance with standards. Our Northeastern Electric Utility client (NEU for the purposes of this case study) navigates a complex operating environment, from functions in both power generation and transmission, to a network of diverse electric utilities including publicly owned, subsidiary, and partly-owned entities. NEU needed an optimized way to manage

At a glance Operations Multi-entity enterprise Generation & transmission 8,000+ employees

their multifaceted business, track NERC compliance, and keep everyone informed.

Needs

If at first you don’t succeed....

Strong user adoption

More than a decade ago, NEU searched for and purchased a well-known tool to manage their NERC compliance program.

They expected the solution to help them demystify the NERC

Tool fitting complex operations Flexible, iterative solutions

standards and requirements, mapping the applicable information

Unlocks

to their different entities in scope. They also assumed it would

Enhanced efficiency & collaboration

be easy to use for all their constituents, no matter their role or

Leadership insight

how often they used it. Unfortunately, the team found the

Reactive to proactive

solution to be all but unusable for most of their stakeholders.

“My team was in the tool regularly, but I was only in every now and then. It was easy to get lost or messed up in the solution,” said their Director who oversees the NERC compliance program. “So I know when our other users had trouble, I couldn’t really blame them.”

Ultimately, the implementation was shelved for NEU, leading them back to managing NERC obligations,

It was easy to get lost or messed up in the solution.

So I know when our other users had trouble, I couldn’t really blame them.

evidence requests, and potential issues of noncompliance in a series of emails, attachments, and Outlook calendars. Audit readiness activities were compiled in individual RSAW documents emailed back and forth, with the NERC team struggling to aggregate simultaneous and asynchronous feedback from multiple reviewers and contributors.

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Seeing the Bigger Picture NEU streamlines NERC compliance with enterprise-wide vision

...try & try again NEU would incrementally assess NERC compliance solutions in the market but spent the better part of a decade without identifying a compelling solution. Until, that is, a colleague at the organization met the Karta team at a conference. “He contacted me and said, ’Hey, you might be interested in this,’ and that’s how we got the ball rolling,” remembers the Director. Karta connected NEU with other peer utility clients, helping them gain confidence that the Karta solution could meet their needs when others had disappointed.

NEU liked the Karta model of a purpose-built NERC solution on an expandable governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) platform. With a solution built on platform technology, they

Certainly we could have gone out to anybody who works with [the platform] to build it, but it would have been more costly because they're building something from scratch versus having something out of the box that just gets installed and configured.

appreciated the flexibility of the technology and the turnkey functionality of Karta’s solution. “Certainly we could have gone out to anybody who works with [the platform] to build it, but it would have been more costly because they're building something from scratch versus having something out of the box that just gets installed and configured,” says the Director. A few would-be challenges were addressed easily by the Karta team. For example, Karta employed a hybrid solution for NEU to balance their potentially opposing desires of compliant BCSI storage along with preferences of SaaS installation of the platform.

Karta implemented a tailored method for NEU to store their files locally, while allowing connection to the SaaS environment.

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Seeing the Bigger Picture NEU streamlines NERC compliance with enterprise-wide vision

This hybrid approach allowed NEU to maintain the security of the BCSI documentation while also gaining the benefits of the

BCSI storage

platform’s reports, dashboards, and workflows in the cloud. In addition, Karta quickly tailored NEU’s implementation, allowing them to operate their NERC compliance program authentically, rather than struggle to translate real life into a rigid solution.

Specifically, NEU’s operating entities became the baseline of the mapped requirements, workflow participants, and approval chains, helping the team adapt requests and tasks to each organization.

Configurable Match how we work Flexible - map entities

Force multiplier NEU has taken an all-in approach to the tool since their launch. With a NERC compliance team of around a dozen individuals but evidence contributors, mitigation stakeholders, and leaders numbering in the hundreds, the team has seen quick adoption from users—the decade-earlier shelved implementation now a distant memory. The compliance team has more time for value-add work rather than spending hours tracking down emails and back-and-forth communication. The NERC team has buy-in to the solution, knowing its fully flexible and configurable architecture allows them to create their own vision of metrics, reporting, and process efficiencies. “Had Karta just delivered us a solution with no opportunity to iterate, or discover and implement new requirements, we may not have had such a smooth rollout,” says their Director. Through “fantastic” client service from Karta, NEU has been able to fix small issues quickly and effectively.

They’ve also already seen opportunities to build better, effective data sets. For example, root-cause analysis investigations were originally created for free-from text entry, but NEU worked with Karta to also add more controlled list-based themes and causes. This small data change allows them to identify hot spots, trends, most frequent issue types, and provides them clear data for prioritization of mitigation efforts.

Had Karta just delivered us a solution with no opportunity to iterate, or discover and implement new requirements, we may not have had such a smooth rollout.

With collaborative RSAW compilation prior to implementing the Karta solution, teams were emailing documents and asking for reviews on segments of the files. This manual effort added churn, unneeded noise for contributors, and potential for user error in assembling the feedback from varied sources. Now, NEU’s stakeholders have access to edit and contribute to their portions of the reports only, making the assembly of these documents smoother and more efficient. A quick export from the Karta solution provides a ready-made report of the entire team’s contributions.

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Seeing the Bigger Picture NEU streamlines NERC compliance with enterprise-wide vision

Clarity wins NEU saw a lot of value by opening up the in-progress NERC compliance efforts to leadership. Prior to automating with Karta’s solution, leaders would need to interject into in-progress work to give feedback or early guidance. With the self-serve dashboard, actionable data, and snapshot views of the audit readiness work in the Karta solution, leaders can catch potential issues or compliance concerns much earlier—even before the formal approval chain is kicked off.

This greater level of transparency for leadership has led to stronger root-cause analysis, more comprehensive documentation, and streamlined approvals bolstered by earlier intervention. The Karta NERC solution has made leadership oversight easier through:

Real-time investigation reports vs. the manual versions that involved multiple team members and hours to assemble Better assurance for leaders with a large area of responsibility that recurring tasks are generated timely and their dashboard view shows the holistic view of their scope Aggregated views of a variety of obligations, including regulatory commitments, incremental reporting requirements to NERC, and self-reported mitigation deadlines The positive improvements to the program have gained attention from the highest levels of the organization, with leaders asking questions about how to expand, create more possibilities, and refine the processes.

Surprised & delighted NEU discovered some unexpected wins through their implementation:

Specialized partners

Flexible solution

Tech liaison

Working with a team focused on

Since the Karta solution is built on

NEU benefitted from a team

NERC compliance helped them

a platform, NEU has had freedom

already familiar with the

work faster and more efficiently.

and flexibility to add new facets

technology. “It was nice to have

“The Karta team has a very good

and features to the solution, like

folks from Karta that could

understanding of NERC standards

adding approval steps or

interpret for me or work out issues

and what the NERC process is. I

notification logic. With each

with [our IT team who manages

never had to educate the Karta

successful rollout of tool

the platform] because they spoke

team, and that’s not necessarily

enhancements, the team is given

the same language.”

the case with everyone.”

more runway to solve challenges creatively and optimize processes.

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Seeing the Bigger Picture NEU streamlines NERC compliance with enterprise-wide vision

What’s next?

NEU's NERC team aced their NERC automation project and is now ready to conquer new initiatives. Many planned next-phase projects will go live in the next 24 months, but the team has been tasked to think through, “what else can we do?” leading them to look at the comprehensive platform upon which the Karta NERC solution is built. With the technology in place, the infrastructure set up, and the internal teams and processes established, NEU is able to plan outward from NERC for additional business functions that can complement or work independently of their NERC solution, providing significantly higher value to the organization than a single purpose tool.

They're also zooming out to see the bigger compliance picture, identifying potential overlaps and streamlining future updates. “We need a place to see everything that’s going on and easily identify what it ties back to. There’s got to be crossover we don’t even know about yet,” shares the Director.

And lastly, they plan to incorporate more proactive planning to their solution. Currently, new standards or major revisions are analyzed manually in documents, but they have their sights set on a new solution enhancement, bringing the collaboration they’ve come to appreciate to the pre-planning side of compliance. By tracking standards updates in the tool, they’ll also be able to connect projects and tasks that relate directly to updates, providing a stronger assurance that changes are being monitored and addressed effectively.

This proactive approach positions NEU's NERC team as a strategic asset, not just a compliance function.

By leveraging their technology capabilities and fostering a collaborative spirit, they're well on their way to transforming compliance into a springboard for continuous improvement across the entire organization.

About Karta - Karta specializes in risk and compliance software implementations for the utility and energy industry, guiding a growing client base of bulk electric utilities through the complexities of automating NERC compliance. We speak NERC, so you don’t have to catch us up on what you need in a solution. You can expect frictionless collaboration and solutions built to last from your Karta team.

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