E.ON U.S. Selects SAP

by Evan Welsh

J.D. Power Winning Utility Selects SAP to Maintain Outstanding Customer Service and Facilitate Emerging Business Needs

SAP America, Inc., a subsidiary of SAP AG, today announced that E.ON U.S., which owns and operates Louisville Gas and Electric Company and Kentucky Utilities Company, has selected SAP software to support its Customer Care System (CCS) Project, the utility's largest ever IT transformation project. The CCS Project will see the replacement of the company's disparate legacy customer systems to create a strategic foundation for excellence in customer service and emerging business needs. E.ON U.S. will use applications from the SAP(R) for Utilities solution portfolio, aligned around SAP's enterprise service oriented architecture (Enterprise SOA), to maintain outstanding customer satisfaction and improve the effectiveness of managerial reporting. The announcement was made at the CIS Conference 31, being held in Orlando, Florida, May 21-24.

The company has begun its SAP implementation and expects to finish the project during the first quarter of 2009. E.ON U.S., which serves approximately 929,000 electric customers and 324,000 gas customers throughout Kentucky and five counties in Virginia, provides some of the lowest-cost energy in the U.S. to industrial, commercial and residential customers. It also routinely achieves best-in-class customer satisfaction ratings among all Midwest utilities. E.ON U.S. conducted a comprehensive analysis of its core business processes to identify opportunities and harmonize business processes.

E.ON U.S. Senior Vice President - Energy Delivery, Chris Hermann, together with Senior Vice President - Information Technology, Wendy Welsh, note that the implementation clearly demonstrates the importance of ensuring that the company's customers continue to receive award-winning service. It also shows the strong need for a system that can meet E.ON U.S. business needs more effectively by allowing for greater flexibility and more stability than the current Customer Information Systems offer. "By implementing the SAP Customer Care System," said Hermann, "E.ON U.S. will continue to maintain outstanding customer service as it replaces aging CIS infrastructure."

"The CCS Project is vital to our continued success as a leader in customer satisfaction," said Welsh. "As the largest IT project in E.ON U.S. history, it will provide a solid platform well into the next generation as we continue to enhance our efficiency and service delivery."

Through the rollout of the CCS Project, building on SAP applications, E.ON U.S. expects to:

• Maintain outstanding customer service -- maintain excellent service call response time and on-time delivery of electric and gas services through leveraging newer technology and adopting industry best practices embedded within the software
• Implement one Customer Care System across both companies -- replace aging IT infrastructure and modernize and standardize business processes
• Facilitate emerging business needs -- provide a flexible platform for emerging needs and increase database capacity to accommodate future growth.

"E.ON's relationship with SAP further demonstrates that the world's leading utility companies continue to rely on SAP and its more than 30 years of success in the utilities sector to understand and scale to their technology needs both today and in the future," said Chris Camino, senior vice president and general manager, Utilities, SAP Americas. "SAP is focused on enabling utilities to be more future-ready by providing more interactive, highly adaptable enterprises that can provide the fastest, most efficient products and services to their customers."