Toshiba America Nuclear Energy Corporation Re-engineers Business Processes and Deploys Cloud-Based Enterprise Application Infrastructure in Months
 
 

Toshiba America Nuclear Energy Corporation Re-engineers Business Processes and Deploys Cloud-Based Enterprise Application Infrastructure in Months

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Toshiba America Nuclear Energy Corporation (TANE), established in 2008, is the subsidiary of Toshiba that promotes advanced boiling water reactor (ABWR) nuclear plant design, engineering, project control, and construction planning, primarily in North America. TANE also provides operations and maintenance support for existing boiling water reactor (BWR) nuclear power plants in North America.

Initially, the Toshiba operating division used manual, spreadsheet-based systems to manage its business processes, including accounting and financial reporting. The company knew for future growth it needed to roll out a more formal and validated enterprise resource planning (ERP) environment to standardize and accelerate processes, extend visibility across the enterprise, allow for scalability, and ensure compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley segregation of duty requirements.

TANE chose Oracle’s JD Edwards EnterpriseOne as its ERP platform and selected Oracle Managed Cloud Services to host the environment.

In choosing a hosting partner, the company compared Oracle Managed Cloud Services costs and capabilities to those of Toshiba’s shared services environment, which runs Oracle E-Business Suite.

With JD Edwards EnterpriseOne hosted by Oracle Managed Cloud Services, TANE gained a robust, cost-effective, and highly available enterprise application foundation that will support the company’s growth.

 
 

 
 

Challenges

A word from Toshiba America Nuclear Energy Corporation

  • "Oracle’s JD Edwards EnterpriseOne applications hosted by Oracle Managed Cloud Services gives us a robust and highly available enterprise application platform on which we can grow rapidly. We have confidence knowing that Oracle can provide the infrastructure we need, when we need it, freeing us from significant capital investment." – Ted Pichalski, Director, Information, Technology, Toshiba America Nuclear Energy Corporation

  • Implement an ERP system to automate and integrate core business processes, and provide controls that enable TANE to consistently and accurately record financial data
  • Ensure a cost-effective solution for the new enterprise, enabling it to apply additional capital to priorities that are central to the company’s core nuclear power engineering, construction, and management business
  • Deploy an ERP system that provides high levels of security as well as segregation of duty capabilities required for Sarbanes-Oxley compliance
  • Provide 24/7 support for business-critical systems, a challenge for the new company’s small IT team
  • Deploy the new environment rapidly to support ramped up business activities

Solutions

Oracle Product and Services

  • Selected JD Edwards EnterpriseOne On Demand applications hosted by Oracle Managed Cloud Services as the company’s ERP foundation, gaining a robust, secure, and cost-effective infrastructure―supported 24/7―on which to grow the Toshiba nuclear engineering and construction subsidiary
  • Selected Oracle Managed Cloud Services over Toshiba’s internal shared services center, which had core expertise in Oracle E-Business Suite applications, as opposed to JD Edwards EnterpriseOne solutions
  • Gained access to deep JD Edwards EnterpriseOne expertise from the company that develops the applications
  • Ensured secure, encrypted connectivity to an SAS 70 certified data center as well as disaster recovery capabilities to protect TANE’s intellectual property, including information on its nuclear power plant customers and projects
  • Introduced best practices for financial management, procurement, job costing and billing, and more to optimize return on investment, replacing manual business processes that were effort-intensive and disjointed and prevented enterprise visibility
  • Eliminated the need for capital investment in IT infrastructure and accelerated time to deployment with a managed cloud services approach
  • Went live in seven months, taking a full month to conduct business-process engineering to optimize benefits of the company’s new enterprise applications
  • Provisioned the first JD Edwards EnterpriseOne environment in just three weeks
  • Gained the ability to close financial books in just two days versus one-and-a-half-weeks with the legacy system
  • Chose JD Edwards EnterpriseOne applications as the company’s ERP foundation over competing suites, since JDE is an engineering and construction industry standard with a core capability with strengths in project costing and integration with Primavera
  • Benefitted from intrinsic security built into JD Edwards EnterpriseOne applications, which enable TANE to set segregation of duties controls out of the box without the need for separate management software
  • Leveraged the MyOracle Change Management program, which provides a controlled production environment, to further streamline compliance with regulatory requirements, such as Sarbanes-Oxley
  • Benefitted from the solution’s value-added service following the 2011 Japan earthquake, when Oracle Managed Cloud Services delivered additional resources to help the company keep in-house IT operations up and running during a critical time when many TANE employees went to Japan to provide support for damaged nuclear power facilities

Why Oracle

TANE selected Oracle Managed Cloud Services to host its JD Edwards EnterpriseOne applications for several reasons, according to said Ted Pichalski, director, information, technology, Toshiba America Nuclear Energy Corporation.

“We had four proposals from implementation providers, and every one of them recommended Oracle Managed Cloud Services for our JD Edwards EnterpriseOne deployment. Who better to run and manage the applications than the company that develops them? We can streamline support and maximize our access to the experts,” Pichalski said. “We also needed to go live quickly, and discovered that no one could provision the environment faster than Oracle Managed Cloud Services.”

Implementation Process

TANE established a six-month implementation timeline. It provisioned the first environment in just three weeks, and went live in seven months. The company extended the timeline to work with Oracle Consulting on business-process engineering, which would optimize return on the company’s ERP investment.

The implementation team included representatives from TANE, Oracle Managed Cloud Services, Oracle Consulting, and Infosys Limited. Several factors contributed the initiative’s success, including participation of the Oracle Managed Cloud Services dedicated service delivery manager in twice-weekly project meetings. The dedicated service delivery manager helped to expedite service and educate the team.

Partner

Infosys Limited provided development expertise and configuration support for the implementation, with its team acting as an extension of TANE’s staff.

“Most consultants want to work Monday through Thursday. The Infosys team was on site Monday through Friday each week and was even available on weekends. In addition to their dedication, the consultants’ strong knowledge of JD Edwards EnterpriseOne and the nuclear energy construction and management industry positioned us to get the most from our JD Edwards EnterpriseOne applications. The combination of Infosys and Oracle Consulting delivered the best possible expertise to our project,” Pichalski said.

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