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VP Regulatory Affairs

Settlement negotiations

Enhances◐ 1–3 years

What You Do Today

Negotiate settlements with commission staff, consumer advocates, industrial intervenors, and environmental groups. Find landing zones that satisfy the utility's financial needs while addressing stakeholder concerns.

AI That Applies

AI models financial impacts of settlement alternatives in real time during negotiations — if we concede X, what does that mean for ROE, customer rates, and earnings?

Technologies

How It Works

For settlement negotiations, the system draws on the relevant operational data and applies the appropriate analytical models. The processing layer applies the appropriate analytical models to the structured data, generating scored outputs that surface the most actionable insights. The results integrate into the practitioner's existing workflow — presenting recommendations, flags, or automated outputs alongside their normal working context.

What Changes

Real-time financial impact modeling during negotiations replaces "we'll have to get back to you" delays.

What Stays

Negotiation strategy, relationship management with regulators and intervenors, and the political judgment that determines settlement success.

What To Do Next

This section won't tell you what your numbers should be. It will show you how to find them yourself. Every instruction below produces a real, verifiable result in your organization. No benchmarks, no projections — just the steps to build your own evidence.

1

Establish Your Baseline

Know where you are before you move

Before adopting AI tools for settlement negotiations, understand your current state.

Map your current process: Document how settlement negotiations works today — who does what, how long it takes, where the bottlenecks are. You need this baseline to measure improvement.
Identify the judgment points: Negotiation strategy, relationship management with regulators and intervenors, and the political judgment that determines settlement success. These are the boundaries AI won't cross.
Assess your data readiness: AI tools for this area need data to work. Check whether your organization has the historical data, integrations, and data quality to support PowerPlan tools.

Without a baseline, you can't measure whether AI actually improved anything. You'll adopt tools without knowing if they're working.

2

Define Your Measures

What to track and how to calculate it

Time per cycle

How to calculate

Measure how long settlement negotiations takes end-to-end today, then after AI adoption.

Why it matters

The most visible improvement is speed. If AI doesn't save time, question whether it's adding value.

Quality of output

How to calculate

Track error rates, rework frequency, or stakeholder satisfaction scores before and after.

Why it matters

Speed without quality is just faster mistakes. Measure both.

When to check: Check after 30 days of consistent use, then quarterly.
The commitment: Give new tools at least 30 days before judging. The first week is always awkward.
What NOT to measure: Don't measure AI adoption rate as a KPI. Adoption follows value — if the tool helps, people use it.
3

Start These Conversations

Who to talk to and what to ask

your board chair or lead independent director

What data do we already have that could improve how we handle settlement negotiations?

They shape expectations for how AI appears in governance

your CTO or CIO

Who on our team has the deepest experience with settlement negotiations, and what tools are they already using?

They own the technology infrastructure that enables AI adoption

a peer executive at a company further along on AI adoption

If we brought in AI tools for settlement negotiations, what would we measure before and after to know it actually helped?

Their lessons learned are worth more than any consultant's framework

4

Check Your Prerequisites

Confirm readiness before you invest

Check items as you confirm them.