Arizona's SRP Powers Business Transformation With SAP

TEMPE, Ariz., Jan. 20, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Founded to preserve the equilibrium between serving customer needs and protecting natural resources, the United States' oldest multipurpose resource reclamation project today is striking a third balance: transforming operational performance. Salt River Project (SRP), one of the nation's largest public-owned utilities, has chosen business software from SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) as the IT platform supporting its corporate mission of improving productivity, efficiency and service while delivering electricity and water to the residents of the greater Phoenix metropolitan area.

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SRP realized its business needed a single, unified IT platform to improve operational efficiency across the back-office workflows running on outdated legacy systems and spreadsheet-based processes. Ultimately, SRP chose the enterprise resource planning (ERP) application SAP® ERP and business intelligence (BI) solutions from the SAP® BusinessObjects™ portfolio.

"We chose SAP based on the clarity of its project road map and partner approach, as well as its executive commitment to our success," said Barbara Hoffnagle, associate general manager and chief information executive, IT & Operational Support Services, SRP. "We worked closely together to estimate the value of an integrated solution in further improving our services and our margins for the benefit of our electric customers, water shareholders and the communities we serve. With SAP, we gain a scalable platform that extends our existing IT investments and paves the way for future innovation in how we deliver on our mission."

Salt River Project carries a broad and diverse slate of operational demands. The Salt River Project Agricultural Improvement and Power District, a political subdivision of the state of Arizona, provides electricity to nearly 940,000 retail customers in the greater Phoenix metropolitan area, and operates or participates in 11 major power plants and numerous other generating stations, including thermal, nuclear, natural gas, hydroelectric and renewable resources. Salt River Valley Water Users' Association provides central Arizona with nearly 1 million acre-feet of water annually, operating an extensive water delivery system of reservoirs, canals and wells.

Working together in a value engineering process, SRP and SAP identified potential enterprise-wide benefits, especially in areas such as financial, human resources (HR) and supply chain management. The process uses industry benchmarking data to help identify and best address business challenges with existing IT investments and complementary solutions.

One of the major challenges for SRP lies in consolidating and cleansing decades of data spread throughout legacy systems to gain data quality and confidence, a task that will be addressed with enterprise information management (EIM) solutions from the SAP BusinessObjects portfolio. This will create a unified BI platform for business planning and the ability to plan, project and report budgeting information at a consistent level for any desired periods in the future and to drill down, drill back or rearrange data at any level of detail.

In addition to financial management, productivity gains are also targeted in HR management processes such as payroll, benefits, time-keeping, recruiting and learning and development. For example, time-keeping processes can be enhanced with employees' ability to enter time via multiple service methods, including online or via cell phones or other handheld devices. Processing travel expenses on corporate credit cards also gains an efficiency boost via the SAP® Bank Communication Management application.

A further challenge lies in replacing paper-based processes as much as possible, transforming these into digital forms and adding new capabilities for indexing, search and "check-in" and "check-out" controls. Native integration of SAP workflow and partner solutions will make documents available directly via the work process when and where they are needed across SRP's geographically dispersed work force. For example, the SAP® Archiving application by Open Text will create a central contract repository for procurement to optimize vendor management and invoice collection processes, and the SAP® Interactive Forms software by Adobe will help replace paper-based processes and reduce redundant data entry across the organization.

New workflow and document management features will also help enable new procurement capabilities such as strategic sourcing, that were previously hampered by lack of unified, robust data and manual processes. The bidding engine and e-sourcing tools within SAP software support employees in decision-making by making purchasing histories readily available, expediting requisition processes, and integrating tracking of purchase and work orders along with their respective cost centers. The centrally archived procurement system also alerts users prior to overspend with automatic notifications.

With compliance as a key regulatory demand as well as core corporate value, Salt River Project will also deploy SAP BusinessObjects software to control system access, manage risk, enhance security and comply with mandated reporting guidelines.

"The deployment at Salt River Project underscores our commitment to delivering business value and investment security with proven products, a clear road map and the added strength of partners," said Diane Fanelli, regional vice president, Industry Business Solutions, SAP North America. "No matter the business needs, time after time, we earn customers' trust in our solutions, our expertise in their industry challenges and our dedication to their success."

About SAP

SAP is the world's leading provider of business software(*), offering applications and services that enable companies of all sizes and in more than 25 industries to become best-run businesses. With more than 105,000 customers in over 120 countries, the company is listed on several exchanges, including the Frankfurt stock exchange and NYSE, under the symbol "SAP." For more information, visit www.sap.com.

(*) SAP defines business software as comprising enterprise resource planning, business intelligence, and related applications.

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