GWA facility
The Australia and New Zealand arm of DXC Technology has migrated Guam Waterworks Authority (GWA) into the Oracle Cloud after using the Oracle JD Edwards World offering as part of its core enterprise planning platform for the past 20 years.
GWA provides water and wastewater services to the 164,900 residents in Guam, a territory of the United States in the Micronesia region of the western Pacific Ocean.
The original on-premises solution posed substantial challenges and was nearing end of life, including vendor support. Over time, upgrades were implemented, but significant configuration issues meant individuals implemented their own manual 'workarounds’ creating siloed lots of information.
The transformation to the JDE EnterpriseOne on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure saw GWA overcome manual ‘workarounds,’ with almost 400 employees now using the integrated solution across finance, warehousing/supply chain, field operations, human resources (HR), and asset management.
As GWA assistant general manager of administration and support Chris Budasi detailed, there were many work processes performed outside of the core systems and, due to the multiple silos, this created an inefficient and error-prone experience with timely access to data “almost impossible".
Recruitment and other HR processes took longer than necessary because of siloed information, and with no dedicated asset management solution and a computerised maintenance management system (CMMS) not linked to financials, there was limited visibility of asset installation and maintenance costs.
Simply running an intensely capital-heavy organisation with hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of equipment and infrastructure using spreadsheets was not sustainable, GWA found.
Following numerous meetings with several service providers, GWA settled with DXC, which undertook a series of on-island workshops showcasing how GWA could modernise, automate and integrate its business systems and processes across finance, HR, supply chain and asset management.
DXC’s Red Asset was chosen to provide a pre-built and tested ready-to-deploy cloud solution.
GWA worked with the DXC infrastructure team to agree on the optimal infrastructure approach for the solution and, based on performance, flexibility, scalability, security and cost, GWA selected JDE EnterpriseOne on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and also integrated its existing Oracle Customer Care and Billing CRM solution.
The implementation of Oracle Content and Experience Cloud led to GWA’s development of a company intranet, opening collaboration and workflow management capabilities to improve customer and employee engagement, across its 400-strong workforce.
“GWA’s employees are excited about this project. It’s a game-changer with a lot of pride attached -- a high profile project locally, which we expect will establish GWA as a leader in modernising how large public organisations work on Guam,” Budasi said.
“The expertise provided on our project far exceeded my expectations with the professionalism shown during the sales process carried through to every member of DXC’s implementation team. It was a true partnership from start to finish with tremendous commitment and dedication from both sides. Any project has problems, but together we just figured it out.
“We squeezed every dollar of value we could out of this project and then a little more. That was possible due to DXC’s expertise and the time taken in planning and design. We achieved a solution that will work for us now and into the future -- all within our limited budget.”
GWA general manager Miguel Bordallo added that the organisation was looking forward to seeing the results -- from improved and automated reporting, to self-service modules for employees, to reducing water loss using new field operations solutions.
“GWA is mirroring our investment in our physical infrastructure with investment in our digital infrastructure, and now we have a digital foundation which will support our growth strategy and set an example to inspire further transformation company-wide,” Bordallo said.
The second phase of the project will see GWA implement Oracle Procurement Cloud to offer end-to-end management of large projects, supporting GWA’s aggressive capital improvements over the next two decades.
“DXC has been able to demonstrate its deep expertise across the enterprise technology stack by achieving a full transformation for GWA,” DXC Red Rock practice director Richard James said.
“The increased efficiencies across all areas of the business are already being realised, and we’re excited to continue our partnership to help GWA accomplish its capital program goals into the future.”
