Itineris delivers 12-month CIS/ERP implementation at Dunea

Following Itineris’ “Adopt Strategy,” Dutch water utility Dunea is looking forward to enjoying benefits of its new CIS/ERP solution 12 months after project launch.

Dutch water utility and Itineris client Dunea is now live on Itineris’ UMAX customer information and enterprise resource planning solution (CIS/ERP) following an expedited 12-month project with no scope overruns.

The implementation resulted from Dunea choosing to follow Itineris’ “Adopt Strategy,” which delivers the UMAX CIS and ERP package pre-configured for best practices.“We wanted to realize the benefits for our customers, by modernizing these systems as quickly as possible. By adapting our business processes to the UMAX solution and minimizing resource-heavy customizations, we have been able to achieve a significant technology implementation within scope, budget and schedule. We are looking forward to reaping the rewards of these efficiencies and our new UMAX solution,” said Wim Drossaert, CEO of Dunea.

About the project

The UMAX CIS/ERP go-live completes the first phase of an initiative Dunea has named “WAVE”—an acronym that translates to “We Work to Connect” in English—focused on three primary goals:

1. connecting customers to excellent water and service
2. connecting processes within the Dunea organization to streamline operations
3. connecting colleagues within Dunea for more efficient working

By following Itineris’ Adopt Strategy for implementation, which leverages business processes and system configuration already refined through successful water utility projects in the region, Dunea was able to focus on organizational transformation and end-user readiness rather than designing and building custom functionality.

“We were not only able to streamline the project into a 12-month window but also able to focus on what we know best, our business, and avoid customizations that add complexity and maintenance costs,” noted Drossaert.

DUNEA is expecting several benefits, including:

• Significant licensing savings compared to previous Tier 1 solution.
• Comments from end users that UMAX is much easier and efficient to navigate, thereby reducing business process and customer service execution time.
• A unified user experience and data model across the front office and back office areas of business.

Itineris and Dunea will do the second phase of the WAVE initiative, which focuses on implementing the UMAX Asset Management solution, also following the Adopt Strategy.

“Our Adopt Strategy is making possible in one year what typical CIS or ERP solutions deliver in 18 to 24 months,” commented Itineris Founder and CEO Edgard Vermeersch. “More important than speed, however, are the many benefits our clients are realizing from implementing a proven, standardized solution. We look forward to continuing to deliver these benefits to Dunea as we enter the Asset Management phase of the WAVE project following this approach.”

UMAX for Water Utilities

UMAX is built on Microsoft’s cutting-edge enterprise platform Dynamics 365®, and Dunea’s solution will run on a proven earlier version—Dynamics AX 2012. UMAX supports core utility operations and customer care processes and is therefore central to Dunea’s business transformation initiative.

Dunea and its customers will benefit from R&D investments by Itineris in recent years that are specific to water utilities—capabilities enjoyed by other Itineris utility clients such as De Watergroep, which manages 1.24M meters, and the City of Baltimore, which services more than 400,000 customers.

Dunea’s operational enhancements will also be due to the total integration of UMAX to the Dynamics enterprise platform and Itineris’ close partnership with Microsoft in the utility space—Itineris holds the status of Microsoft Global ISV.

About Dunea

Dunea is somewhat unique among the world’s water utilities in that it also manages more than 2000 acres of coastal dunes, which naturally filter approximately 80 million cubic meters of river water each year.

Dunea then delivers that water through more than 4000 kilometers of water pipes to over 600,000 connections.

In these ways, Dunea plays an important role in the lives of its customers as a provider of great tasting water and a protector of the environment—including publicly-accessed nature preserves it maintains on the dunes.