Peer Community
Engage Directly with a Community of Peers to Share Challenges,
Discuss Emerging Trends, and Implement Proven Strategies.
The Challenges Facing Utilities Today
Utility analysts and managers are often charged with solving complex operational problems without much visibility into how peers are approaching similar issues. Functional silos can make the job harder, obscuring connections across the organization and making it difficult to know where changes will have the greatest impact.
At the same time, utilities face growing pressure to improve performance, manage costs, and make well-supported decisions. Access to experienced peers gives teams a broader perspective when they need to determine what to try next.
And this is where the First Quartile Peer Community comes in.
What is the First Quartile Peer Community?
The Community of Peers connects directors, managers, supervisors, analysts and support people with utility industry peers who are working through many of the same operational challenges. Participants operate under a strict confidentiality agreement to openly share approaches, experiences, lessons learned, and emerging ideas so others can find useful ideas and move forward faster.​
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A director working on payment arrangements, for example, can connect with peers who have already tested several approaches, learn what they experienced, and continue the conversation around what might fit their own utility.
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Membership in the First Quartile Peer Community is an all-encompassing benefit provided exclusively to participants of the First Quartile Benchmarking Program. This integrated relationship ensures that benchmarking data is paired with direct peer interaction, providing a level of value that resonates deeply with participants.
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As one utility executive notably shared: “This is the one check I don’t mind writing, and actually look forward to paying because the interaction and insights are invaluable.”
Why Join a Community of Peers?
The greatest value of our Peer Community is the opportunity to learn from others, discover proven approaches, and make informed decisions faster. Through direct conversations with fellow utility leaders, you gain practical insights, identify ideas relevant to your own operations, and bring those ideas back to your utility to drive meaningful improvements.
Learn from Early Adopters: Gain insights from peers who are already exploring new technologies, such as AI chat, or dealing with emerging regional threats like wildfires moving south.
Build Business Acumen: Compare results against a panel of approximately 30 peer utilities to gain internal alignment, establish clearer targets, and prioritize goals and objectives.
Learn Actionable Approaches: Discuss the methodologies and approaches that peers have implemented to achieve first-quartile results. Resolve issues together through live demonstrations, process walkthroughs, implementation lessons, and working sessions.
Overcome Isolation: Connect with peers working through similar challenges, compare approaches, and discuss what may fit your utility.
How It Works
DISCUSSION
FORUMS
Specialized sessions
that allow analysts
and managers to
hear directly from
peers about specific
functional areas,
such as call center
operations or
distribution reliability.
ANNUAL
INSIGHTS
CONFERENCE
A hybrid/virtual
event held every
summer where the
community discusses what is relevant, emerging, and new.
DIRECT
PEER-TO-PEER
NETWORKING
The ability to call peer utilities directly to ask questions, facilitated by a network that has
been active for over
25 years.
AD HOC
SURVEYS
Access to quick,
community-driven
polls designed to
solve immediate,
hot-topic problems.
REAL-WORLD
ISSUES
Peer conversations are practical and tactical (affordability, credit and collections, customer satisfaction, eBill adoption, AI, reliability reporting, staffing, storm
response) whatever
utility teams are working through today.
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Real-World Community Impact
Faster Storm
Response
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One utility used community benchmarking to inform storm-response improvements, completing restoration in two days versus an earlier five-day estimate and reporting lower costs.
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Improved Revenue
Management
Members have shifted their
focus from lagging metrics, like
write-offs, to leading indicators,
such as the percentage of
residential customers currently
up-to-date, based on top-
performer practices.
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Increased Customer
Satisfaction
Community members gained a
deeper understanding of how
their credit and collection
processes correlated to higher
customer satisfaction scores.
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Who Benefits from Participating?
The First Quartile Peer Community is for the people who own the work, including directors, managers, supervisors, analysts, and support staff across customer operations, transmission, distribution, reliability, safety, and other utility functions. By engaging with this network, they uncover the actionable steps and practices used by top performers to drive meaningful improvement within their specific functional areas.
Ready to Bring Peer Experience to
Your Performance Decisions?
First Quartile Peer Community members have direct access to peers who understand the work, the constraints, and the questions behind the numbers. They share what has worked, compare approaches, and work through challenges together, helping each utility learn faster and make better-informed decisions. Bring your questions, contribute your experience, and become part of a community built to move utility performance forward.
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