Providing water and electricity services for approximately 200,000 people in Eugene, Oregon and the surrounding area, EWEB is the state’s largest customer-owned utility. Each year, the organization delivers about 8.5 million gallons of drinking water to its customers and delivers 2.3 billion kilowatt hours of electricity.
The utility recently began a large-scale IT transformation project in an effort not only to improve its customer experience but also to update its legacy systems.
“We knew we needed to modernize our systems,” Travis Knabe, EWEB CIO, recently told ASUG, further noting that the enterprise manages about $1.3 billion in total assets. “The scope of this project was to take our current functionality—in our legacy systems—and implement them into SAP.”
Following an extensive RFP process, EWEB selected SAP as its IT partner, and kicked off the multi-stage process of implementing several SAP solutions to drive modernization and process improvement efforts.
“We decided to be wall-to-wall SAP,” Knabe said, discussing how the organization adopted a multi-“season” approach to the widespread digital transformation.
In December 2024, EWEB went live with the first part of its big bang implementation. Leveraging RISE with SAP, the utility completed a greenfield migration to SAP S/4HANA Cloud, private edition, by modernizing specific legacy systems, including billing, finance, customer portal, and ancillary systems.
Knabe sat down with ASUG to discuss how EWEB approached such a massive digital transformation, hurdles the organization overcame, the utility-specific improvements the organization realized, and his advice for other utility companies.
The Need for Modernization
EWEB embarked on this large-scale digital transformation for several reasons. Knabe said that IT modernization was a major driving force, noting that one of the utility’s systems was still using Java. Additionally, EWEB wanted to improve the security of its operations, including securing its IT assets and desktops.
According to Knabe, EWEB also “wanted to increase customer confidence” and drive an improved customer experience. Specifically, the organization sought to expand payment options and choices for its customers, including prepayment functions. EWEB also wanted to drive increased participation with its customer portal.
“Now customers can log into the portal and sign up for our customer programs,” Knabe said, noting that EWEB previously used a “homegrown” application that wasn’t connected to its legacy CIS system.
However, modern, connected customer programs and the ability to complete certain utility actions themselves are steadily becoming the “expectation” among consumers.
“We had a goal that at the end of the project, we would have a full 360-view of the customer,” Knabe said, citing the importance of EWEB’s Customer Service Analysts (CSAs) to see specific work being done. Armed with a modernized SAP suite, EWEB undertook these critical improvements and enabled its customers to complete certain actions virtually.
The First “Season” of SAP
After signing its contract with SAP, with support from their Solution Implementation Partner, Deloitte Consulting, EWEB began replacing its legacy systems with SAP solutions.
“We had zero SAP systems when we started,” Knabe said.
After leveraging RISE with SAP to stand up its cloud-based IT environment, EWEB embarked on the process of implementing a wide array of SAP solutions, including Finance, Customer Information System (CIS), Sales & Service Cloud, Business Technology Platform (BTP), and Analytics Cloud along with SEW Mass Market Portal with Enterprise Persona and SEW Program Manager.
From beginning to end, the first portion of the project took EWEB approximately 18 months to complete. According to Knabe, about 200 of the utility’s employees were heavily impacted by the transformation, including EWEB’s CSAs and customer and finance teams.
Knabe also noted that EWEB has two separate utilities: water and electric. Given the division, the two teams often “did things a little differently” when it came to managing and fulfilling service orders. However, EWEB “folded” those teams’ operations into a single SAP-supported operation.
Utility-Specific Improvements
Knabe detailed the specific improvements the new SAP solutions brought EWEB.
On the customer service side, the utility now supports automated move in and move out services. So, when a new EWEB customer begins their utility service after talking with a CSA, the SAP business process automates the service connection without engaging complicated, multi-layered ticketing processes. This fully automated process eliminates the need for duplicate and weekend work.
The digital transformation project now also enables EWEB to complete service orders with SAP solutions. These operations are unified across the two utilities, marking a giant step towards achieving EWEB’s goal of having a 360-degree view of the customer.
Finally, the digital transformation set a foundation for EWEB to continue innovating and improving its business process across the utility for years to come.
Overcoming Hurdles
Like virtually all enterprises conducting digital transformation projects, EWEB encountered a few hurdles over the course of the 18-month rollout. “EWEB has not gone through a digital transformation project like this before,” Knabe said. In response, EWEB instituted extensive change management operations and resources “across the board.”
“We had to make sure people understood what we were doing, why were doing it, and why we needed their help,” Knabe said.
Specifically, the enterprise hired a change management consultant a year ahead of the go-live date. Additionally, EWEB leveraged one of its employee experience staff members to become the internal face of change management efforts. “My humble opinion is that you must have someone internally talking about change management,” Knabe said.
The utility also brought on an SAP Program Manager consultant, who had experience completing six similar projects in the past.
“It was, undeniably, a massive move in the right direction for us,” Knabe said.
Due to these efforts, Knabe noted that there was no turnover stemming from the project, an incredible accomplishment considering its extent.
SAP Transformation Advice for Utilities
Knabe shared advice for other utility companies about to engage in their own digital transformation projects. Specifically, he highlighted the importance of change management. “You must do it,” he said. “It’s critical.”
On the leadership side, he encouraged other IT leaders to not be afraid of “getting into the weeds” of a project, emphasizing the importance of visible leadership. Moving forward, EWEB is preparing to embark on its second “season,” after taking a year to embrace the new innovations these SAP investments have yielded. Looking over the strides EWEB has made since it began this process, Knabe is incredibly happy with the work done and proud of his team.
“I couldn’t be more proud of the EWEB transformation team and their efforts. I am thrilled with our outcome,” he said.