NEWSROOM

EN Engineering and EN Communications are #BetterTogether 

An unrecognisable utility workman carries out repairs on a transformer connected to an 11000 volt power line.

Lindsay Swanson – EN Engineering

I am ENTRUST’s Vice President for the South for our Utilities group. My area covers everywhere from the Carolinas to Florida, through the Gulf and through Texas. There are approximately 400 people in my group, performing work for a variety of electrical and gas clients across that vast territory. 

Stacy Steward – EN Communications 

I am Director of Investor-Owned Utilities Programs at ENTRUST, joining the group when FiberRise was acquired by ENTRUST last year. Previously, I spent 10 years working on GIS / outside plant mapping of facilities for electric / water / gas companies, followed by 20 years in network engineering for an equipment manufacturer. 

 

Complementary, Not Competitive 

 

S: Lindsay and I both believe that the best opportunities for new business come from work and projects adjacent to what our teams are already doing. There is inevitably work that the other team is undertaking that fits in nicely as part of an overall larger project for ENTRUST. For example, as a power company’s network of substations along their transmission routes get closer to the customers, everything that they are doing from a grid modernization point of view, could be supported by fiber, boosting communication around the network and allowing the operating companies to make better decisions. Therefore, the two areas in which Lindsay and I work are very complementary.

ENTRUST can win increasingly larger parts of customer projects if multiple sectors can successfully work together. For example, Lindsay’s team has some insight in back-office systems that we do not have insight into. We could bring that into our projects. A lot of the work that Lindsay is doing in Florida and with Duke Energy is work that is done everywhere, and so the capabilities of her team could be brought to any other customer that we have a relationship with. Our emphasis is on developing complementary work between our teams rather than competing over it.

 

Leveraging Client Opportunities 

 

L: One of our largest target clients in the south is gas and electric utility company, Southern Company. Stacy’s group have a long-established relationship with Southern Company, especially in Alabama, so we have thought hard about how we could partner on projects where maybe FiberRise could do one piece, but ENTRUST could do a bigger portion of the overall project. In the past, they might have given piece A to FiberRise, and piece B to somebody else. The message we want to convey is if you just give the whole thing to ENTRUST, we can work together as we are all one big team internally. 

As well as expanding our piece of the pie with existing customers, we are also working on engaging with new customers. For example, because we know the correct folks at Duke, we can get in the room and potentially make those introductions for Stacy’s team, who have not worked with them before. Making a simple introduction and walking away is one path open to us, and partnering and executing projects together is another possible path.

 

Transparency & Communication

 

S: In our business, building relationships is crucial. Within the companies that we serve, there will be people who move and perform a variety of job roles over the course of their career. By establishing solid relationships with individuals and groups, you open the opportunity to seamlessly grow into new project opportunities. This applies to both client relationships and inter-team relationships within ENTRUST. 

L: Stacy and I, along with our teams, have weekly meetings focused on business development. We discuss what projects we are working on, which others we should pursue, identify the relationships we need to work on, and whatever other opportunities we come across. We openly discuss what new ideas or new problems the customer has that we may have the capacity to solve

S: Utilities are very large corporations, and it is sometimes difficult for them to navigate their own internal corporate structure. We will occasionally assist in communication between departments of the same company. Due to our approach to communication, we are happy to find ourselves in the middle of this mix of departments for our customer, asking questions and developing a deep understanding of the organization as a result. 

 

#BetterTogether

 

S: We can certainly take on bigger projects now because of our expanded capabilities and our new approach to working together. Essentially, we are there for each other. We support each other. If we find we are lacking relationships on one side, we know we can turn to our other team to help us leverage those relationships. We have seen some benefits already and obtained some meetings and had conversations that would never have happened before. 

L: There’s been some pilots and projects that I feel have been successful where my team has learned more about what Stacy’s group does and vice versa. We also have a couple of new projects in the works that have the potential to grow significantly. The path forward is to keep doing what we are doing, working better together, and helping each other get in front of the right people and successfully grow business for ENTRUST and our clients. 

 

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