At this year’s SAP for Util­i­ties, Pre­sent­ed by ASUG, con­fer­ence, held Sept. 9 – 11 in Mia­mi, FL, ASUG and SAP rec­og­nized the achieve­ments of cus­tomers har­ness­ing the pow­er of SAP tech­nol­o­gy to accel­er­ate inno­va­tion and help the world run better.

Announced on Tues­day morn­ing by Jen­nifer Bald­win, Indus­try Exec­u­tive Advi­sor for Util­i­ties at SAP, who emceed this year’s event, the SAP Util­i­ty Excel­lence Awards shone a light on lead­ing cus­tomers in the util­i­ties sector. 

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

Duke Ener­gy

Acclaimed for its excep­tion­al cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion with res­i­den­tial nat­ur­al gas ser­vice in the South among large util­i­ties, Duke Ener­gy — and Pied­mont Nat­ur­al Gas, its sub­sidiary—is one of the most trust­ed util­i­ty brands in the U.S. In 2023, the busi­ness deployed the next gen­er­a­tion of SAP S/4HANA IS‑U while adopt­ing RISE with SAP for their cus­tomer infor­ma­tion and billing sys­tem. Through a seam­less tran­si­tion, com­plet­ed in just over 15 months, their inno­v­a­tive approach to cloud inte­gra­tion has set a new stan­dard for resilience and per­for­mance in the util­i­ty indus­try. For this vision and ded­i­ca­tion to cus­tomer ser­vice inno­va­tion, Duke Ener­gy has been hon­ored with the Excel­lence in Cus­tomer Ser­vice award.

Excel­lence in Work & Asset Management

NiSource

Hav­ing launched its enter­prise asset man­age­ment (EAM) trans­for­ma­tion in 2022, NiSource has since suc­cess­ful­ly mod­ern­ized its out­dat­ed IT sys­tems and stan­dard­ized process­es to reduce costs, risks, and cyber vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties. In July of this year, NiSource went live with Phase 1 of this project for 2,000 users in Indi­ana — only for its sys­tems to prove their resilience dur­ing a major storm two weeks lat­er. As NiSource pre­pares to pro­ceed with Phase 2, for nat­ur­al gas users, in 2025, the com­pa­ny remains focused on opti­miz­ing work process­es for effi­cien­cy and safe­ty. For this ded­i­ca­tion to inno­va­tion and oper­a­tional excel­lence, NiSource has been hon­ored with the Excel­lence in Work and Asset Man­age­ment Award.

Excel­lence in Cloud ERP Migration 

Sem­pra Infrastructure

Imple­ment­ing RISE with SAP to achieve a mod­ern­ized SAP S/4HANA Cloud land­scape through its XPAN­SION pro­gram, Sem­pra Infra­struc­ture inte­grat­ed val­ue chains and drove a uni­fied sin­gle source of truth for its busi­ness data across the U.S. and Mex­i­co. In col­lab­o­ra­tion with PwC and SAP, the Sem­pra team ensured a smooth, dis­rup­tion-free tran­si­tion and set a new bench­mark for cloud ERP migra­tions. In recog­ni­tion of their suc­cess, Sem­pra Infra­struc­ture has been hon­ored with the Excel­lence in Cloud ERP Migra­tion Award.

Inno­va­tion & Vision Award 

South­west Gas

South­west Gas faced sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenges with its exist­ing field inspec­tion solu­tion, which relied on out­dat­ed sys­tems for ver­i­fy­ing employ­ee and con­trac­tor iden­ti­ties, train­ing, and qual­i­fi­ca­tions. To address these issues, South­west Gas devel­oped a smart­phone-based solu­tion lever­ag­ing SAP Busi­ness Tech­nol­o­gy Plat­form (BTP), allow­ing real-time access to employ­ee and train­ing data through unique QR codes. This inno­v­a­tive approach has stream­lined inspec­tions, improved safe­ty, and elim­i­nat­ed delays caused by out­dat­ed or miss­ing data. In recog­ni­tion of this inno­v­a­tive solu­tion, South­west Gas has been hon­ored with the Inno­va­tion and Vision Award.

Pur­pose-Dri­ven Utility

Amer­i­can Water

With a focus on safe­ty, peo­ple, growth, and oper­a­tional excel­lence, Amer­i­can Water has cre­at­ed a high-integri­ty, trans­par­ent work­place where employ­ees feel empow­ered to bring their whole selves to work. As the largest and most geo­graph­i­cal­ly diverse pub­licly trad­ed U.S. water and waste­water util­i­ty, Amer­i­can Water has been stream­lin­ing oper­a­tions to focus on deliv­er­ing clean, safe, reli­able, and afford­able ser­vices since select­ing RISE with SAP in 2023. For their ded­i­ca­tion to pur­pose and the com­mu­ni­ties they serve, Amer­i­can Water has been hon­ored with the Pur­pose Dri­ven Util­i­ty Award.

Util­i­ty of the Year – Mid-Sized 

Chesa­peake Util­i­ties Corporation

For Chesa­peake Util­i­ties Cor­po­ra­tion, a diver­si­fied ener­gy deliv­ery com­pa­ny engaged in the dis­tri­b­u­tion of nat­ur­al gas, propane gas, and elec­tric­i­ty, embark­ing on a cloud cus­tomer infor­ma­tion sys­tem (CIS) imple­men­ta­tion project required clear vision — as well as part­ner­ship with SAP and IBM. Though the project lat­er expand­ed to involve the acqui­si­tion of Flori­da City Gas, Chesa­peake remained on track and on tar­get through­out the project, suc­cess­ful­ly going live this past August. Chesa­peake Util­i­ties Cor­po­ra­tion has been hon­ored as the win­ner of the Util­i­ty of the Year Award (Mid-Sized).

Util­i­ty of the Year – Large Enter­prise

Ever­source Energy

To build an enhanced cus­tomer infor­ma­tion sys­tem (CIS) on the SAP S/4HANA plat­form in a pri­vate cloud, Ever­source Ener­gy con­ceived and exe­cut­ed Project Omni in col­lab­o­ra­tion with EY and SAP Active Atten­tion, ben­e­fit­ting over two mil­lion elec­tric and gas cus­tomers in Mass­a­chu­setts as of the com­ple­tion of its Phase 2 in June of this year. Deliv­er­ing a uni­fied, stream­lined cus­tomer expe­ri­ence with sig­nif­i­cant ser­vice enhance­ments, the ini­tia­tive has trans­formed Eversource’s rela­tion­ship with its cus­tomers, in align­ment with shift­ing cus­tomer expec­ta­tions and envi­ron­men­tal needs. Ahead of its Phase 3 launch in 2025, Ever­source has been award­ed the pres­ti­gious Util­i­ty of the Year Award.