Success Stories - Niagara Falls Hydro
The Organization
Niagara Falls Hydro is an independent, yet fully regulated corporation owned by taxpayers in the City of Niagara Falls. Niagara Falls Hydro is the distributor of electricity in Niagara Falls and is responsible for the maintenance of the equipment and wires that deliver the electricity to homes and businesses.
Niagara Falls Hydro is a community owned utility, which has been providing safe and economical power for more than 84 years. Since its inception in 1915, Niagara Falls Hydro has devoted its energy to customer service and innovation in electrical distribution. From arc street lighting and 1,200 customers in the beginning, Niagara Falls Hydro has evolved to 33,000 customers and a modern underground distribution network.
The Challenge
Niagara Falls Hydro is responsible for the tracking of many projects and reporting on these projects across many criteria. The level of detail required for project tracking is extremely involved and includes employee time, equipment charges, inventory costs and direct purchases. In addition Niagara Falls Hydro operates a billing system for their 30,000 plus customers and required a system that would allow for the integration of these transactions in order to get a full picture of their financial situation. Payroll and Human Resources were also key criteria. Niagara Falls works with both unionized and non-unionized employees and required a system to track data and maintain confidentially.
The key problems were:
- Project Cost Capture: Each project requires the capture of costs for employees, equipment, inventory and purchases.
- Inventory Management: Niagara Falls Hydro has a large inventory master with a variety of high value, serialized items that required specific item tracking.
- Complex Financial Reporting requirements: Niagara Falls Hydro requires financial statements to enable management to run the business and completely separate information is required to report to the OEB.
- Payroll: Time captured for project tracking needed to also be updated to the Payroll system without the need to manually re-enter time.
- Human Resources: With both unionized and non-unionized employees, tracking of health and safety, grievances, attendance, vacation, sick etc was being handled semi-manually and a more integrated system was required.
- Flexibility for future changes: Niagara Falls Hydro required a system that would adapt easily to the on-going changes in the Utilities industry.
Why Microsoft Dynamics Great Plains
BDO Dunwoody was selected as the Niagara Falls implementation partner due to extensive Project Management experience along with strong skills with finance and project accounting systems. We recommended Microsoft Dynamics Great Plains for the following reasons:
Product Strength for Financials, Project Accounting and Time & Expense
- Microsoft Great Plains provides the state-of-the-art financial and project reporting strength that Niagara Falls required.
- Project accounting with time, equipment and inventory were key requirements. Great Plains delivers this functionality as part of the standard offering.
Ease of use:
- Using a standard Windows interface, Great Plains is an easy financial system to learn.
- Users are able to easily leverage their existing skills with Microsoft products (Excel, Word, etc.) because Great Plains uses similar navigation.
Vendor Stability
- Microsoft is the leading provider of software to businesses in the mid-market with over 20 years experience providing financials systems software.
- Microsoft Dynamics Great Plains runs on the proven industry standard database, Microsoft SQL.
- Microsoft Dynamics Great Plains is a mature product with a proven track record for stability in the market.
Functionality & Scalability
- Microsoft Great Plains is a non-industry specific ERP system, which provides a wide span of functionality.
- Please refer to www.microsoft.com/dynamics refer for detailed product information.
The Solution and the Technology
The new system designed and implemented by BDO, consists of the following Great Plains Modules delivered on Microsoft SQL Server.
| Project Accounting/Payroll/HR |
Financials |
Reporting & Tools |
| Project Accounting |
System Manager |
Integration Manager |
| Puchase Order Processing |
General Ledger |
Integration Manager |
| Human Resources |
Bank Reconciliation |
Crystal Reports |
| Canadian Payroll |
Payables Management |
|
| Inventory Control |
Receivables Management |
|
The Results:
- Financial Reporting and Project Reporting is all created directly from Great Plains using standard reporting tools.
- Serialized and non serialized inventory is tracked within the Inventory module; receipts are processed easily with Purchase Orders and are transferred to Project as required.
- Time is entered one time and updated to both Project and Payroll. No manual intervention is required and there is no need to summarize and re-enter.
- Transactions from the billing system are imported to Great Plains with Integration Manager.
- Financial statements are created for both the Management Team and for the OEB with FRx.
- Human Resource information is securely stored with Great Plains. Manual systems or shadow systems are no longer required.
