October 1, 2014
In today's high-octane business environment, the ability to manage and share data often determines whether an enterprise soars or stumbles. However, integrating legacy systems—and connecting them to more modern tools and technologies—can prove daunting.
At Plymouth Rock Energy (PRE), a leading independent provider of energy in the Northeast United States, growing pressure to operate faster and better forced the company to completely revamp its IT systems.
"In recent years, we achieved significant growth in both our customer base and the volume of resources we handle," says CIO Jonathan Adlerstein. "It had become difficult to manage customer information and a variety of other data within legacy systems."
In fact, the privately run firm—which sells electricity, natural gas and heating oil to residential, small business and commercial/industrial customers—found itself sinking under the weight of Excel spreadsheets and an Access database.
The situation made it increasingly difficult to handle essential tasks, from managing customer interactions to conducting audits. Adlerstein says it had gotten to the point that the inefficiencies were threatening to undermine the firm's performance. "We required a more flexible and reliable IT framework," he explains.
Unfortunately, major ERP vendors weren't an option. "Those vendors did not offer products tailor-made for our industry," he says. In addition, most industry-specific software did not match the firm's needs.
The company's management understood that it needed to engineer a solution from the ground up and address a number of factors and criteria that spanned numerous areas, including general ledger, billing, customer service and CRM. As a result, PRE turned to consulting and integration services firm Bluewolf to design and build a solution that could power the business into the future.
