Listening to vegetation managers shapes everything about how we build Satelytics. We keep the same core message: our edge is not “AI theater,” it is a disciplined habit of listening and then designing the product around real vegetation workflows and regulatory pressure.

Why Listening Sessions Matter

Utilities are not asking for yet another generic “AI” pitch; they want a partner who understands the realities of planning circuits, stretching OPEX, and defending choices to regulators. Satelytics’ advantage comes from recurring, structured listening sessions with vegetation managers that tie product decisions directly to their constraints, KPIs, and metrics. These conversations turn customer pain into the roadmap, not just into marketing sound bites.

What Vegetation Managers Are Really Facing

In a recent full-day session, a utility vegetation leader walked us through the pressures that define his job. Regulatory scrutiny tops the list: Public Utilities Commissions judge performance on metrics like SAIDI, SAIFI, and CAIDI, and vegetation-related outages weigh heavily on each of them. Tree-caused interruptions are far from a niche issue; analyses show vegetation accounts for more than one-fifth of outages in the United States, and in some territories it is the dominant weather-related driver.

Time-based trim cycles are increasingly inadequate. “Trim every X years” is blunt, expensive, and only loosely tied to reliability outcomes. Research on enhanced and optimized vegetation programs shows targeted strategies can reduce storm-related outages by up to 65%, depending on the storm and approach. But jumping too quickly from cycle-based to fully predictive programs is risky: if planning, budgets, and field workflows are not aligned, outages can rise before they fall. The message from the customer was direct: help us evolve without blowing our reliability metrics or breaking the budget.

Designing to Match the Actual Workflow

That same customer then mapped how work really happens, from desktop planning to the right-of-way, and asked Satelytics to fit into that reality instead of rewriting it. He described four stages:

1. Planning and scheduling: Planners decide where to send crews while balancing monthly OPEX, contractor capacity, and reliability impact, with higher‑criticality circuits (for example, serving thousands of customers) naturally taking precedence when dollars are tight.

1. Canvassing and pre‑identification: Field teams walk lines, identify vegetation risks, and define scope tree by tree, creating cost estimates that will later be examined by internal leadership and regulators.

1. Execution of work: Internal crews and contractors bid, schedule, and perform the work in the field.

1. Post‑assessment: The utility verifies that work was completed as contracted, updates maintenance cycles, and determines when to return.

Instead of positioning imagery and analytics as a standalone side tool, Satelytics used this feedback to plug into the true entry point: planning and scheduling. Our product now emphasizes prioritization, routing, and both tree‑level and circuit‑level risk that snap directly into existing planner workflows. The point is not just to “find trees,” but to help answer questions such as:

• Which circuits will move SAIDI and SAIFI the most if addressed first?

• Within those circuits, which spans and individual trees present the highest fall‑in risk given height, distance, and health?

• How can managers stay within budget while still demonstrating measurable progress to regulators over a 3–5‑year horizon?

Industry guidance reinforces this long view: vegetation decisions often take three to five years to show up as durable SAIDI/SAIFI improvements. Satelytics designs with that horizon in mind, aligning with the 5–7‑year planning cycles and regulatory expectations that utilities live under, rather than chasing short‑term gimmicks.

From Pain Points to Product Priorities

Sessions like this directly steer development priorities. From just one discussion, several themes crystallized:

• Hybrid predictive + time‑based support: Vegetation managers are not discarding cycles overnight. They want a hybrid model that overlays risk‑based insights on top of existing time‑based plans, so Satelytics emphasizes a blended, easy‑to‑use view instead of demanding an “all‑in AI” leap from day one.

• Integration over isolation: Utilities stressed that any solution must work with core systems like SAP, Maximo, Dynamics 365, and existing vegetation tools. Past NERC vegetation violations have cited weak data integration as a factor, and penalties average well into six figures per violation, sharpening our focus on robust integration, not just detection algorithms.

• Modern, circuit‑centric interfaces: Managers asked for dashboards that speak their language—customer counts per circuit, outage‑prone feeders, tree counts and history per line, and costs compared to budgets—aligning with best practices that combine vegetation, reliability, and cost data to justify proactive work.

• Tree‑level metrics and defensibility: With more than one‑fifth of outages tied to vegetation and vegetation‑related transmission events still regularly reported, managers must be able to defend each line‑mile and removal. Satelytics is built to provide traceable, tree‑level evidence for internal stakeholders and external auditors alike.

In other words, the roadmap is co‑authored with the people who own reliability, not written in isolation from them.

Listening as a Strategic Advantage

On the surface, every vendor claims to understand its customers. In reality, enforcement actions and outage history show that vegetation management remains one of the most scrutinized parts of reliability. Violations of NERC’s FAC‑003 vegetation standard carry the highest average non‑CIP penalty, and a majority of these violations are categorized as a serious risk to bulk system reliability. Meanwhile, U.S. customers still endure several hours of interruption per year on average, with vegetation a major contributor.

Satelytics’ advantage is not analytics alone; it is analytics shaped by the daily experience of vegetation managers living inside CAIDI, SAIDI, and SAIFI. By sitting with customers, mapping workflows, and iterating design around their regulatory, financial, and operational realities, Satelytics becomes more than a monitoring platform. It becomes an implementation partner that understands that:

• Reliability metrics drive reputation, rate cases, and capital allocation.

• Vegetation managers must deliver early wins while committing to a three‑ to five‑year performance horizon.

• Integration, usability, and defensibility are as important as detection accuracy.

Vegetation‑related outages will not disappear on their own. But utilities that pair robust vegetation programs with partners who genuinely listen are already seeing tangible reductions in outage frequency and better storm resilience. If you have ideas, frustrations, or wish‑list items for how vegetation management should work, we would like to hear them — because listening is exactly where our next wave of innovation starts.