Salt River Project Identifies US$500,000 in Cost Reduction Opportunities Through Unified IT Portfolio Management
 
 

Salt River Project Identifies US$500,000 in Cost Reduction Opportunities Through Unified IT Portfolio Management

  • Oracle Customer:  Salt River Project
    Location:  Phoenix, Arizona
    Industry:  Utilities
    Employees:  4,500
    Annual Revenue:  $1 to $5 Billion

Printer View Printer View

Salt River Project (SRP) includes two entities serving the Phoenix area: the Salt River Project Agricultural Improvement and Power District and the Salt River Valley Water Users’ Association. The SRP district operates various power plants and generating stations to provide electricity to nearly 956,000 retail customers. The SRP association maintains an extensive system of reservoirs, wells, and irrigation laterals to deliver nearly 1 million acre-feet of water annually.

Previously, SRP used multiple spreadsheets to manage its IT projects and applications—a time consuming and error-prone process that exposed the company to risk and unnecessary IT procurement and management costs. The company wanted to improve management of its extensive IT infrastructure, including more than 1,200 applications used to run its diverse electricity and water operations. It also wanted to identify systems for retirement and set standards for IT procurement, cloud use, and mobile applications to future-proof the organization’s IT investments and safeguard against risk.

Salt River Project implemented Oracle’s Primavera Portfolio Management to unify management of its extensive IT portfolio, including essential utility systems, like work and asset management, as well as programming frameworks and development tools. With the system, SRP discovered almost US$500,000 in cost-reduction opportunities by identifying redundant or low use software, including 150 applications that are close to being unsupported. The company retired 10 applications in the last year and upgraded 34 systems. SRP also identified preferred technologies and ensured that more than 90% of applications are based on standard technologies—reducing procurement costs, simplifying maintenance support, and lowering total cost of ownership.

 
 

 
 

Challenges

A word from Salt River Project

  • “A diversified utility operating a variety of electricity and water generation and maintenance systems inherently requires a large-scale IT infrastructure. Oracle’s Primavera Portfolio Management helps us keep that infrastructure under control, while revealing ways to save money and reduce risk, which helps us prepare for the future.” – Eileen Ahles, IT Portfolio Manager, Salt River Project

  • Improve management of the organization’s extensive IT infrastructure, including more than 1,200 applications used to run its diverse electricity and water operations
  • Modernize and deploy technology standards to future-proof the organization’s IT investments and deliver a scalable system
  • Reduce costs by retiring unused or duplicate systems

Solutions

Oracle Product and Services

  • Implemented Oracle’s Primavera Portfolio Management to unify management of SRP’s extensive IT portfolio, including essential utility systems, like work and asset management, as well as programming frameworks and development tools
  • Provided approximately 70 users in the IT support group with detailed insight into the product lifecycle of each piece of IT infrastructure and software in the entire portfolio
  • Discovered almost US$500,000 in cost reduction opportunities by identifying redundant or low use software that could be eliminated or migrated to alternative solutions
  • Identified approximately 150 applications that are close to being unsupported and prioritized them to begin modernization
  • Retired 10 applications in the last year and upgraded 34 to eliminate outdated technologies
  • Identified preferred technologies for the company and ensured that more than 90% of applications are based on standard technologies—reducing procurement costs, simplifying maintenance support, and lowering total cost of ownership
  • Recommended the centralized management of licenses to enable the organization to capitalize on economies of scale
  • Improved coordination across the organization’s siloed business units, ensuring that users share experiences when evaluating new products, as well as avoid purchasing products already in use elsewhere in the company
  • Benefited from the dependences and relationships feature that enables users to quickly identify all systems used by one division, or all the divisions using one system
  • Helped managers to plan IT projects—including resources and funding—more proactively and strategically
  • Developed processes to evaluate and negotiate with external cloud providers, and improved ability to assess cloud providers’ security
  • Initiated desktop software and mobile application approval processes to provide guidance to employees on the system types they are permitted to use—improving security and simplifying IT management

Why Oracle

Salt River Project chose Oracle’s Primavera Portfolio Management after evaluating it against four other solutions.

“Oracle’s Primavera Portfolio Management offered the most functionality to support our diverse needs,” said Eileen Ahles, IT portfolio manager, Salt River Project.

Resources