Hafslund

Hafslund ASA, serving more than 25 % of the Norway’s population, is the country’s largest power distributor, and has the largest power sales in Norway. Hafslund has more than 2,000 employees, total assets in excess of US $ 3 billion and annual revenue in the region of US $ 1 billion. It is also a medium-sized power producer, generating 3 TWh. In addition, Hafslund plays a major role in the security services market and in contracting. The Company is listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange, and consists of six divisions, each with its own business area.

Since implementing component-based IFS Applications™, Hafslund has greatly enhanced its work processes and improved administrative procedures. Faster, more accurate reporting and the capability to monitor and manage critical work processes have entailed major savings in time and money for the company, allowing it to reallocate resources to improve customer service.

The challenge

Like many other companies of its size and background, with mergers, acquisitions and organizational changes, Hafslund had an array of different systems and work processes that required far too many resources to be efficient in the long term and to meet the challenges of a modern enterprise. Dag Akselsen, responsible for ERP applications at Hafslund, explains, “It was time for us to put our house in order. The patchwork of systems we ran was untenable in the long term.”

The solution

Hafslund began an extensive procurement process, initially to find a financials solution that would suit its operations. However, the search eventually broadened to take in a complete enterprise resource planning solution. After checking what the market had to offer, and making a shortlist that included major global suppliers, Hafslund selected IFS. According to Morten Lie, CIO at Hafslund, IFS “had the best functionality and could offer us the added benefit of having a local presence.” Good references, long experience of supplying solutions to utilities, and competent personnel were other factors in IFS’ favor.

Implementation

One of the main factors underlying the success of the implementation was the preparation done by Hafslund beforehand. In collaboration with IFS, the company assessed requirements and allocated sufficient resources to enable the project to run smoothly. To begin with, IFS trained a group of key “super-users” at Hafslund. This transfer of knowledge made Hafslund more independent and reduced the need for consultancy from IFS. As Morten Lie puts it, the role of IFS “ was more that of an innovator or animator.” The super-users then took on the task of training the end-users, making extensive use of role-based situations to align the training to the end-users actual needs, making it as realistic and efficient as possible. In all, implementation took no more than five months.

Benefits

After implementing IFS Applications, Hafslund dramatically increased the speed and quality of reports. With their old business software, it took too long to close the books every month-often more than 60 days. Now, with IFS Applications, accurate monthly reports are available less than 10 days into the new month. This means that management gains faster access to business-critical information, can analyze performance more easily, and is generally on top of business issues in a way that was not possible before. Perhaps just as important, the heavy costs resulting from long delays in reporting are no longer an issue at Hafslund because of the speed and accuracy enabled by IFS Applications.

It has also become much easier for Hafslund to manage and monitor critical flows in the organization, such as procurement, work order management, project management and service management. This makes it easier to spot bottlenecks, for example in supplier invoices, check project budgets and make more timely adjustments wherever they are required. The result is major savings in time and money, and greatly enhanced control of operations.

Another benefit is that time is reported directly into the system, thereby radically reducing the unwieldy process of handling and entering manual time reports and eliminating the risk of error involved in manual data transfer. The administration resources that have been freed because of this are now been used in other areas to enhance customer relationships.

IFS Applications is an excellent tool for handling organizational changes like mergers, splits and outsourcing. In 2002, Viken Energinett AS, with 800 employees, merged with Østnett and Hafslund to form Hafslund ASA with more than 2000 employees. The flexibility of the solution made it easy to add and configure the new companies and sites, restructure employee and organizational data, and configure the system with data from the new companies.

Both Dag Akselsen and Morten Lie are agreed about a further benefit. “IFS Applications is an excellent business-to-business solution. It allows electronic procurement and invoicing and enables our various companies to collaborate seamlessly. Documentation in one company can easily be accessed by authorized users in another without a piece of paper changing hands. It also enables our subsidiaries to present a generic interface to external parties.”

E-invoicing has considerably lightened the heavy burden of invoice management as it facilitates matching the invoice with its original purchase order and accelerates the processing of identifying deviations.

Finally, Hafslund has also implemented the preventive maintenance components in IFS Applications. With preventive maintenance the system itself generates work orders when maintenance is planned, resulting in more efficient work processes and lower costs.

Software

IFS Financials™
IFS Maintenance™
IFS Distribution™
IFS Human Resources™
IFS Project Management™