Investor-owned utility implements Oracle Energy and Water applications to integrate trusted data, reduce costs through automation, and enrich customer service

Madison Gas and Electric (MGE)’s investment in its Wisconsin service territory dates back more than 150 years. To continue to deliver reliable energy and services to its 159,000 electric and 169,000 gas customers, the company is digitizing its operations with Oracle.

As part of a larger ‘Enterprise Forward’ strategy, MGE recently implemented Oracle Utilities Customer to Meter, a complete customer information system (CIS) and advanced meter solution, and Oracle Fusion Cloud Customer Experience (CX). Based on the project’s success, MGE was recognized with the CS Week 2022 Expanding Excellence Award for “Best CIS Implementation” (LINK).

Together with its new Oracle customer experience applications, MGE is working toward a unified view of its customers. The utility will continue to improve and streamline services and manage asset health and maintenance to reduce costs and risk through the final phase of the project, which will include Oracle Utilities Work and Asset Management (WAM) and long cycle construction work management. Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN) member Ernst & Young (EY) was the primary system implementer and Oracle Consulting also provided support to MGE for this initiative.

In phase one of its modernization program, MGE went live with Oracle Fusion Cloud Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Oracle Fusion Cloud Human Capital Management (HCM), and an inventory component of Oracle Utilities Work and Asset Management (WAM). In conjunction with Customer to Meter, the utility was able to wrap modern customer experience capabilities around critical back-office processes to create a holistic, future-ready customer platform.

“While we continue transitioning to a more fully digital model for key business processes and functions, the power of Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications prepared us for this next step by allowing employees to spend their time on higher value work and enhancing our collaboration and data governance capabilities,” said Shannon Paulsen, program director for Enterprise Forward at MGE. “With the new Oracle Energy and Water solutions, we now have the reliable, integrated system of record we needed to eliminate more manual processes, store and deliver updated data to our integrated systems, better visualize corporate costs and spend, and more efficiently meet our regulatory requirements.”

 With an eye to a more digitally powered future, MGE launched its five-year ‘Enterprise Forward’ transformation project in 2017 with a goal of ultimately touching every part of the company. Oracle back office and vertical applications have played a key supporting role in this transformation. Not only has the initiative empowered the utility to modernize and consolidate legacy systems to reduce operational costs, but MGE is now better positioned to deliver more customized programs, products, and services to better engage customers. The utility also has increased flexibility to address future energy needs and expectations and meet established sustainability goals, such as achieving carbon reductions of at least 80% by 2030 and net-zero carbon electricity by 2050.

The implementation of Oracle Utilities Customer to Meter is providing MGE with customer insights and an intuitive solution that delivers significant ease-of-use improvements for customer service representatives. This will result in shorter learning curves for onboarding of new employees. Oracle Utilities Work and Asset Management (WAM) is also helping the utility increase inventory visibility. After the final wave of the project, which will implement full-scale WAM, the company intends to reduce risk and optimize its operations by improving asset performance and prolonging asset life through advanced data management, visualization, and analytics capabilities.

“Utilities must continue optimizing the performance of their networks and assets to reduce operating costs, deliver superior customer service, and meet rising sustainability goals,” said Brad Kitchin, group vice president for Oracle Energy and Water. “With Oracle, MGE has more powerful, integrated solutions—spanning customer experiences, inventory management and enterprise processes—that have them well-prepared to accomplish their impressive ‘Enterprise Forward’ objectives.”

source: oracle news