Newmarket-Tay Power Distribution Ltd. (NTPDL)

Organization info

Pressured by entrants from the digital economy, disrupting the industrial landscape, as well as governments and regulatory bodies seeking to encourage smarter measuring systems, Newmarket-Tay sought a solution to overcome their challenges and create opportunities by moving to a fully digital business model.

Newmarket-Tay Power Distribution Ltd. (NTPDL) provides hydro- electric power to approximately 35K customers in the Town of Newmarket and the Township of Tay. With the recent purchase of the Midland Power Corp, NTPDL increased its customer base to 42K.

NTPD's mission is to be an operationally and financially effective company while delivering safe and reliable service. Each day, the utility puts safety first, provides excellent customer service and reliable electricity delivery to their entire customer base.

The challenge: Legacy systems

NTPDL's legacy system presented numerous challenges:

1. Inability to easily extract information and peruse timely detailed reporting
2. Upgrades and service packs require additional time and cost
3. Limited integration with NTPDL's Customer Information System (CIS) used for utility billing
4. Fixed Assets were maintained in Excel

NTPDL needed to replace their outdated Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system with a modern, robust, cloud solution that offered a digital platform to overcome many of the immediate internal, industry and government challenges. This includes fully integrating finance, work management, customer billing and data entry, as well as streamlined supply chain management and inventory controls for materials.

The solution & technology: A smart power alternative

In 2018, BDO Consulting (Technology) team partnered with NTPDL to introduce a smart power solution. Consisting of Microsoft Dynamics, Job Cost and the BDO Fixed Asset Auto Creator (FAAC), the fully integrated system allows for the seamless flow of data and much more:

1. Job Costing provides actual and budgeted cost insight into labor, materials and equipment
2. The FAAC automatically creates assets from capital jobs, at the appropriate regulated (asset class) and GAAP levels saving time and reducing errors
3. Customer revenue tracked in their CIS and related transactions are seamlessly integrated real-time into their updated ERP
4. Through complete automation from job estimation, trough work management to capitalization, NTPDL is well equipped to address and overcome their industry challenges and focus on the core business of efficiently providing electricity to their customer base.

The benefit: Digital transformation

Implementing BDO's smart power solution based on Microsoft Dynamics has led to increased efficiencies, streamlined processes, improved reporting and a variety of other benefits.

• NTPDL's new technology platform can leverage the power of tools like PowerBI for KPI reporting, instead of Excel
• The reduction of manual rekeying has led to greater accuracy and increases in efficiencies
• This integrated financial system has greatly improved real-time reporting capabilities
• Fixed Assets are created in an integrated system, directly from jobs, using the Fixed Asset Auto Creator tool
• All job related costs and expenses are now easily allocated to jobs with appropriate automatic burden calculations
• Employee and equipment time is easily posted to jobs and payroll without the need to rekey payroll related job cost data
• Using Microsoft SQL technology has simplified the maintenance and upgrade of the underlying infrastructure allowing for seamless moves to PAAS or SAAS based IT investments

“…No matter what obstacles or challenges we faced, the BDO Consulting (Technology) were always there to assist. As well as having a broad base of knowledge and experience to draw on, BDO helped lower operating costs, increased reporting capabilities and business intelligence, and supported more efficient business processes.”

~ Newmarket-Tay Power Distribution

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