Sunflower Electric Power Corporation, a regional power supplier based in Kansas, is deploying Oracle's E-Business Suite Release 12 and On Demand to improve its asset management and other business operations. Atlanta-based integrator Signum Group has signed a multi-year integration and consulting services contract to manage the deployment.

When the system goes into production in early 2008, Sunflower will be one of the first R12 and On Demand deployments in the United States.

Sunflower had previously worked with Signum on their legacy business management systems. Originally, Sunflower was looking for a new computerized maintenance management system (CMMS), but eventually decided that they needed a new enterprise management system to meet their increasingly complex business needs. Sunflower has assumed the operations and maintenance (O&M) responsibilities for Mid-Kansas Electric Power Company, LLC (MKEC), another generation and transmission (G&T) company that recently acquired all of Aquila Inc.'s electric assets in Kansas.

"They really wanted a whole e-business suite," said Signum CEO Sue Hrib. "It took six months to get the approvals, and we began deployment in March of this year." The entire system should be live by January 2008.

"This is one of the first R12 go-lives with Oracle EAM, so the project has very high support form Oracle," Hrib continued. "They are also using the On Demand offering, where Oracle hosts the applications, and that has probably been one of the most important elements of this project from a technical standpoint. It helped the implementation hit the ground running."

Oracle released the R12 version of its software in January, which included enhancements to its enterprise asset management offerings.

Sunflower cited Signum Group's long track record of successful Oracle EAM deployments, EAM subject matter expertise, and Oracle implementation customer references as key reasons for their decision to select Signum Group.

"Oracle R12 On Demand provides us the flexibility to support our widely dispersed operations in a highly cost-effective manner," said Jerry Herman, Sunflower Electric's senior manager for information systems. "We chose Signum Group as our implementation partner because their SignumWay business process management approach accelerates our time to benefit from the system and ensures that we configure and deploy to meet Sunflower's specific business requirements."

"With Oracle R12, Sunflower will have key capabilities to streamline asset maintenance programs and seamlessly track financial reporting requirements specific to generation and transmission cooperatives," said Raymond Colles, Signum Group's Oracle practice director.
 
Oracle will replace between six and eight legacy systems. With an integrated e-business platform, Sunflower will be able to have an accurate picture of their asset and maintenance costs. "They're in acquisition mode, and they need to be able to keep better track of that data," Hrib said.

The new system will also streamline existing business processes, and help the company adapt to changing regulations, enforce internal controls, maintain Sarbanes-Oxley compliance, and meet Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) requirements.