More time for content

The workflows of a grid company are well known. Among other things, this involves calculating grid usage fees, revenue path management, maintaining the current regulatory database and managing the EEG (Renewable Energy Sources Act in Germany, which guarantees renewable energy producers fixed feed-in tariffs, similar to the KEV in Switzerland; editor's note) and KWKG (Combined Heat and Power Act in Germany, which regulates the feed-in and remuneration of electricity from combined heat and power plants; editor's note). These are all very demanding, time-consuming and also small-scale tasks that have to be implemented on time and, above all, on budget. This challenge also faced the grid company of Stadtwerke Duisburg, which not only wanted to plan its respective activities sensibly, but also to process them in a system-supported manner.

Not always consistently informative figures

The desire was to know at any time exactly where one stood with each individual measure, but also condensed with all measures, which budgets were assigned to which measures and whether all projects were running according to plan as calculated. When it comes to pure budget reconciliation, many companies already work with their SAP solutions and evaluate their figures in this way. For the euro figures, this certainly produces very accurate results, but beware: the figures reported are not automatically consistently informative. After all, if you have planned 100 measures over the course of a year, budgeted €50 million for them, and spent €25 million in the middle of the year, you might think you are on target. In the end, however, the pure budget value of 25 million euros has no significance whatsoever, because time and resource factors are much more interesting with regard to the planned measures. It could be that some projects are well ahead of schedule - also in terms of budget - but that other measures have not even been started yet, contrary to the original planning. And that could really mess up the master plan.

Commercial and regulatory aspects in equal weighting

Michael Springer, authorized signatory and senior sales manager of the BI provider prevero: "Here, it is quite specifically a matter of keeping all the necessary figures - i.e. the technical and the commercial content - in a single system, which is precisely the crux of the matter. The system must be designed in such a way that both the foreman who carries out technical work on the transformer station and the project employee who is responsible for purchasing materials can easily access it. And, of course, this also entails a change in thinking, because the master craftsman who lays the cables has not been interested in the monetary effects of his work up to now, it was not even asked for. " To build exactly this bridge, many companies are introducing a kind of technical controlling. This is often an employee with a technical background, who also examines and takes into account the commercial aspects of the respective measures. Springer: "It must be made clear what effect the postponement of a measure from May to August, for example, has in commercial, regulatory or even personnel terms. From a regulatory point of view, I may be in breach of legislation; from a commercial point of view, the postponement could have an impact on cash flow; and as far as staff are concerned, by August they may have long since been scheduled for other projects and may therefore no longer be available, and the purchase of external staff that would then be necessary would in turn have an impact on the cost plan and the overall budget." The commercial approach is certainly unfamiliar to the technical staff at first, but: "It quickly becomes clear that working with just one system makes life much easier for everyone involved. If they were to keep the commercial figures in the SAP system, they would have to pull these figures out of the system for each individual monthly report, merge them and then transfer them to Excel lists. The prevero system, on the other hand, offers ready-made logics, for example, so that the work and effort for the specialist departments is reduced. Our experience shows that especially the technicians appreciate this very much, after all, it is not their job to build up any forecast models or to push Excel calculations back and forth. »

Futile efforts with the SAP system

Dr. Jens Kiefel, authorized signatory and head of the Basic Issues and Controlling department at Stadtwerke Duisburg Netzgesellschaft mbH, comments: "I don't want to hide the fact that we also initially tried to design our investment and measures controlling with SAP on-board resources. We use SAP in many areas of our company anyway, and it works very well and reliably at the operational level. But after we had invested a lot of time and money with little success, it quickly became clear that we needed another system here. And since we already use prevero for group controlling and regulatory tasks anyway, we had someone show us how to approach this issue. We made the decision and are now working with a very flexible software platform that can also be administered by our foremen and the specialist department without any programming knowledge. Especially after the experience with the previous SAP trials, this was very important to us," Kiefel continues.

Uncompromising data transparency

In this context, the accuracy and speed with which the prevero system works and the extremely fast availability of all actual data are also important. Technologically very sophisticated ETL components (Extract, Transform, Load) are used to connect operative systems and to transform the data as they are needed for the provision in the system. There are certified and standardized interfaces to common ERP systems that make it possible to create highly automated data connections within a very short time. The user can then view the currently posted data near time - for example, every hour - right down to the originator level. For example, the foreman must not only be able to see that a sum X has been posted to a certain cost center, he must also be able to see which partial amounts make up this sum in order to be able to estimate which further postings he still has to expect at this point. Or he sees his planned value in a report, compares it with the actual value, looks at the difference and can access each individual document in the system. Springer: "This example explains very well how important transparency is, which is the main prerequisite, especially for the management, in order to be able to make decisions. This certainly applies to all areas and all industries, but it is even more important for network companies because the business is driven purely by the measures, and fast response times are essential here."

Kiefel can only emphasize this: "It is indispensable to be a leader in planning, i.e. in the distribution of funds, through great transparency and then to constantly know where you stand in the processing of the approved funds. This applies not only financially, but also in terms of quantities and resources. Our task is to maintain a secure status at all times. Since, as a network operator, we primarily carry out technical measures that ensure security of supply, these must be transparent at all times within the company so that any imbalances can be identified at an early stage and we can react quickly accordingly."

More time for content

Springer adds: "The good news is that the time previously lost in comparing Excel lists that never matched and in repeatedly preparing data can now be put to good use. On the one hand, you can rely on the figures from the system and don't break out in a sweat when the boss briefly asks for a forecast for the electricity division across all investment and maintenance projects, and on the other hand, the system becomes an active control instrument for the management. "For example, planned measures can be calculated both from a regulatory and a commercial point of view. With "what-if" scenarios, you can see what happens if you bring forward a certain measure, or whether there are advantages if you shift certain parameters. Springer continues: "And that's exactly when the dialogue with the technology begins, and that's also the main benefit, in addition to system uniformity: that technicians and business people gain a much better understanding of each other because they talk to each other. Our customers like the fact that they finally have more time for content. »