Based in Toronto and serving more than 1.7 million customers, Enbridge Gas Distribution is Canada’s largest natural gas distribution company. Today, its customers include retail end-user customers, large industrial users, and retail energy marketers.
When the Ontario energy market was deregulated, retail energy marketers began to offer natural gas to the end-user market. To address the changes deregulation brought about, Enbridge’s IT department developed a contract and billing system that ran on the company’s existing technology, but was also partially paper-based.

“Our existing system initially met the needs of both Enbridge and the marketers,” said George De Wolf, Director of Information Technology, Enbridge Gas Distribution. “However, before long, we realized we needed a system that would do a better job of reconciling what was being contracted by the marketers and what was actually being distributed to, and used by, their customers. The data and reports supplied by the first system could not keep up with the pace of business, market changes and our customers’ needs.”

With the goals of increasing the retail energy marketers’ satisfaction, reducing billing issues and eliminating data fixes, Enbridge selected Sapient, a member of the Oracle PartnerNetwork, as the primary partner to manage the design and implementation of the new solution.

The new solution, called the Energy Transaction Reporting, Accounting and Contracting (EnTRAC) system, replaces two key systems used by the gas distributor - a gas contracting (GasCon) system and a mainframe information system called ELVIS. EnTRAC consists of Oracle Application Server running on Oracle Database in a clustered UNIX environment. A clustered environment was chosen for two primary reasons - firstly, to more effectively deal with the seasonality of the business, which sees a higher number of contracts and transactions in the summer season. Secondly, clustering provides Enbridge with the reliability it needs to perform trend analysis. Huge amounts of historical data can be analyzed without compromising the company’s ability to perform day-to-day transactions.

Together with Sapient, De Wolf and his team selected Oracle’s software because it offered a robust set of tools, including Oracle JDeveloper, which would enable the company to build a custom solution that would grow with the business and meet Enbridge’s evolving needs.

“We are excited to deliver a solution that is reliable and scalable and is critical to helping Enbridge Gas Distribution innovate its customer service ,” said Hank Summy, Managing Director of Sapient Canada. “As EnTRAC’s base platform, Oracle is powering a major component of the largest gas distributor in Canada.”

Tangible Business and Marketplace Benefits

EnTRAC is integrated with approximately 30 other business applications, resulting in vast improvements in internal reporting. Enbridge’s own decision makers and those of the retail energy marketers have immediate access to accurate, real-time information. Furthermore, the new solution allowed Enbridge to consolidate onto the Oracle Database and retire eight other systems.

“EnTRAC has given us significant savings on the gas contracting and billing system, but more importantly, our people – who were previously trouble shooting – are now able to listen to our customers and discuss with them how we can make the system even better,” said De Wolf. “The dynamic of responsibility has changed. With access to up-to-date data on contracts, pricing and supply, the marketers now have more control. This self-service solution gives them the independence to be strategic and collaborate with us on ways to make the entire marketplace work better.”

About Enbridge Gas Distribution
Enbridge Gas Distribution provides safe, reliable delivery of environmentally-preferred natural gas. It is one of the fastest growing natural gas companies in North America, serving over 1.7 million residential, commercial and industrial customers across Ontario. Enbridge Gas Distribution is a subsidiary of Enbridge Inc. of Calgary. Enbridge Inc. common shares trade in on the TSX and NYSE under the symbol "ENB." More information about Enbridge Gas Distribution can be found at www.enbridge.com/gas.

About Oracle
Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) is the world's largest enterprise software company. For more information about Oracle, please visit our Web site at http://www.oracle.com
###

Trademarks
Oracle, JD Edwards, PeopleSoft and Retek are registered trademarks of Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

.