At this year's SAP for Utilities, Presented by ASUG conference, held Oct. 9–11 in Chicago, IL, ASUG and SAP upheld their annual tradition of recognizing the remarkable accomplishments of customers harnessing the power of SAP products and technologies to accelerate innovation and help the world run better.
Referred to as “the Oscars” of the conference by Jennifer Baldwin, Industry Executive Advisor for Utilities at SAP, who emceed this year's event, the SAP Innovation Awards shined a light on several customers in the utilities sector.
SAP Innovation Award winners were recognized in seven distinct categories and presented with their prizes by Michael Sullivan, National Vice President of Renewable Energy and Utilities for SAP, alongside other industry leaders. Many of those recognized were ASUG members. Below, the winners of this year's prizes:
Excellence in Customer Service: Dominion Energy
Facing challenges from the COVID-19 pandemic, Dominion Energy sought to replace its customer information and meter data management systems with a new enterprise customer information and billing system—the Customer Core Platform, which involved an implementation of SAP S/4HANA for Utilities and SAP C/4HANA. Dominion Energy is an ASUG Member. (Pictured: Andy Thomas, Director - IT Business Account at Dominion Energy and Heather Jennings, General Manager, Customer Information Platform at Dominion Energy.)
Excellence in Operations: Southern California Edison
One of the largest electric utilities in the United States, serving approximately 15 million California residents across a 50,000-square-mile area, Southern California Edison (SCE) focused on developing a foundational setup for process optimization and design, leveraging data analytics and governance with SAP Signavio, and building a discipline for continuous process improvement, in order to align strategy with technology. (Read more about SCE's transformation here.) Southern California Edison is an ASUG Member. (Pictured: Terino McMullen, Principal Manager – NextGen ERP - Technology Integration at SCE.)
Excellence in Collaboration: Nebraska Public Power District, Metropolitan Utilities District, and Lincoln Electric System
Focusing on collaboration, this new award added a fresh dimension to the celebration of outstanding achievements within the conference. It was presented jointly to three utilities for their outstanding teamwork in addressing the critical needs of utilities in Nebraska while focusing on safety, reliability, and affordability: Nebraska Public Power District, Lincoln Electric System, and Metropolitan Utilities District. (Read more about LES' evaluation of RISE with SAP here.) All three organizations are ASUG Members. (Pictured: Chris Pelchat, Corporate Application Manager, Nebraska Public Power District; David Malcolm, Vice President & CTO at Lincoln Electric System; and Sue Lobsiger, Senior Vice President CIO, Metropolitan Utilities District.)
Innovation & Vision Award: Eugene Water and Electric Board (EWEB)
Oregon's largest customer-owned utility successfully transitioned its legacy systems to a single cloud-based enterprise platform to better serve customers. Eugene Water and Electric Board is an ASUG Member. For more from EWEB, SAP Field Service Management (FSM) solution (Pictured: Travis Knabe, CIO at Eugene Water and Electric Board.)
Purpose-Driven Utility: Energy Harbor
By successfully migrating from SAP ERP Central Component (ECC) to SAP S/4HANA on RISE with SAP, doing so within a nine-month timeframe, Energy Harbor displayed its dedication to customers as one of the largest producers of carbon-free electricity and accelerated its transformation into a fully integrated retail energy provider. (Pictured: Mandi Grose, Manager Applications at Energy Harbor, and Dan Halvelka, VP/CIO at Energy Harbor.)
Utility of the Year – Mid-Sized: Summit Utilities
Within one year, Summit Utilities successfully optimized and deployed a greenfield SAP S/4HANA cloud platform, integrating 34 systems and expanding their capabilities to serve 500% more customers and a 300% larger workforce. Summit Utilities is an ASUG Member. (Pictured: Jeremy Shreckhise, VP & CIO at Summit Utilities.)
Utility of the Year – Large Enterprise: NextEra Energy
NextEra Energy, which recently completed a business transformation as part of its migration to SAP S/4HANA, demonstrated the effectiveness of its team, partnerships, and leadership structure through successfully implementing a comprehensive enterprise data model, simplifying cost flows, leveraging SAP Fiori to enhance user experience, and enabling various processes that impacted 15,000 employees. NextEra Energy is an ASUG Member (Pictured: Mary Jane Diloreto, Senior Director, FP&A at NextEra Energy, and Leo Quintana, Director, IT Enterprise Finance, NextEra Energy / Florida Power & Light.)