Green electricity company Ecotricity has implemented the latest
version of SAP's Industry Solutions Utilities (ISU) software in
seven months.
The system, which provides back-office functions for Ecotricity
retail business using services from IBM, is believed to be the
first successful implementation in the UK of the ISU package.
Dale Vince, chief executive officer at Ecotricity, said, "We
implemented SAP in seven months, successfully migrated our
databases, on time and to budget, and only had issues with 200
customer accounts."
Ecotricity chose to run the software "out of the box", with
little customisation, to simplify the project.
Vince put aside a team of six experts from the various business
departments at Ecotricity to help IBM with the implementation.
The software is run from within a server room at Ecotricity.
Vince said he wanted his own internal staff to manage basic SAP
support. "I have plans to grow our own expertise in SAP," he
said.
The company, which provides wind farm energy for 35,000 domestic
users and 3,000 businesses, has implemented SAP for customer
registration, billing, customer relationship management and data
handling to support the company's business growth.
Over the coming months he said Ecotricity would be installing
SAP's human resources and manufacturing modules. Ecotricity will be
installing SAP SP as its final major SAP project, he said. This
product will be used to help the company plan its wind development
projects. "Within a year, I want the whole company on SAP," he
said.
The SAP system is able to handle all the data created and
received by Ecotricity and supports eBilling, which Vince said
would help Ecotricity lower the its cost per customer metric. The
software is also able to support the company's business plan for
2009, which is to offer domestic gas to its customers.
