LENEXA, KS, Feb. 2, 2005 -- SAP America Inc. a subsidiary of SAP AG, announced that eastern Kansas water utility WaterOne has selected mySAPTM Business Suite solutions to drive efficiency and innovation across its core processes.
Targeting improved customer responsiveness and reduced operating expenses, the midsize utility is replacing approximately 30 legacy systems with SAP's integrated software suite for enterprise management, customer services and mobile business processes. WaterOne joins a fast-growing list of midsize utilities that are addressing changing market demands with mySAP Business Suite, choosing the integrated approach taken by their larger peers.
-- Enterprise management: WaterOne chose SAP to deliver the strategic business platform for the utility's Enterprise Application Software Integration (EASi) project, designed to optimize core business processes serving the company's 130,000 residential and commercial customers. At the same time, the project's focus is on complying with increasingly strict regulatory and environmental requirements while reducing IT operating costs. With mySAP Business Suite, WaterOne will gain integrated applications for financials, human resources, work management, inventory management and purchasing transactions.
-- Customer information: The utility is deploying the customer information system (CIS) from the SAP for Utilities industry solution set. The utilities-specific application will help the company improve customer service by enabling the customer service team to respond more quickly to billing and service inquiries and supporting customer-focused processes such as smooth transfer of services when customers move.
-- Mobile business processes: WaterOne also plans to leverage SAP solutions for mobile business, enabling field service employees to gain real-time visibility across customer work orders and perform their daily activities at plants and customer sites using laptops or handheld devices.
"We identified a number of key business processes we wanted to improve and saw that we needed to eliminate the costs of building and supporting the disparate applications that drive them," said Mike Armstrong, general manager, WaterOne. "The customer information system from SAP will help us improve operations and customer service."
For more information about SAP solutions for utilities, visit: www.sap.com.
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