According to Berberich, the upgrade is an opportunity for the grid operator to eliminate some of the costs associated with maintaining separate BI tools. He said it would be difficult to estimate the exact savings that standardizing on BI tools will yield.

"We are creating value on a number of fronts," Berberich said. "First, we have reduced support costs because we don't have so many disparate reporting tools. Training costs are reduced because we don't have to train on a collection of tools."

Finally, he said, workers gain efficiency because they don't have to use separate tools for different tasks.

While he acknowledged that it's generally difficult to get BI users to change tools, the ISO has been successful by clearly laying out the advantages of the new products. Officials have worked to create a "bit of excitement around the new product" that may make the tools more attractive to users than those now in use.

"You have to be firm in your position on the standard," he said. "What is important to us is that we focus on providing information. To the extent we have a tool that can change data into information ... [that] is very useful."