Utilities | Paramount Technologies

UTILITIES

Around the world, utilities are under pressure. Citizens demand energy and water that don't undermine environmental quality. Customers seek choice and convenience. Regulators respond with new market structures. Financial stakeholders look for operational efficiency—but aging workforces and infrastructures need replacement. The pressure is forcing utilities to re-examine every aspect of their business.

With limited options to generate more revenue through higher prices, utilities are forced to be even more resolute in wringing costs from their operations and maintenance activities to achieve high performance. For many utilities, the procurement function represents an area in which significant cost reductions can be gained. Typical utilities spend between 40 percent and 60 percent of their operations and maintenance budgets on third-party materials and services, which means the procurement organization has a tremendous opportunity to help a utility dramatically improve its overall business performance.

How Employee Workforce Automation Can Help

Paramount’s WorkPlace Suite helps utilities improve efficiency and reduce costs:

Integrated project accounting, time and expense management
Multi-language capabilities
Comprehensive multicurrency support
Single point of entry from approved expense through to client invoicing
Able to integrate seamlessly with both off-the-shelf and internally developed systems
Ability to track requisitions against budgets, receive warnings if over budget and route for approval based on a requisition line item exceeding the budget
Robust approval process that allows routing to an unlimited number of approvers based on criteria such as $ amount, department, GL Account, etc. and allows the items to be fully approved before creating a purchase order
Utilities are typically required to get 3 or more bids/quotes on requested items; with RFQ you can send requisitions to multiple vendors with an email notification, vendors can complete quotes online, and all quotes can be reviewed and awarded based on defined criteria
Ability to track requisitions against contracts that have been established with vendors and enforce special pricing that has been negotiated with the vendor
Documented auditable process