Tuas Power

Rapid economic development of the past decade in Asia and growing demand has injected dynamism into the region’s energy market, but it has also created new challenges for the energy and utility industry. Tembusu is the realization of a dynamic, innovative and creative business model, focusing on environmental sustainability.

Ben Lau, Senior Vice President (BD) at Tuas Power: “The first of its kind in the region, the Tembusu Multi-Utilities Complex is a system that employs cuttin-edge technologies and optimized resources to high efficiencies and environmental sustainability.“

A sophisticated IT solution was needed to support the Tembusu project. The system would have to perform end-to-end business processes such as contract management, fuel supply, meter data management, and billing. Wong Kim Teck, Vice President (IT) at Tuas Power: “The IT team worked very closely with each business unit to define a set of achievable key objectives that will strategically enhance the customer experience“. This led to the birth of the BEST project, which stands for Business Enterprise System for Tembusu.

The BEST project has to accommodate changing business requirements in a complex environment, so it requires a flexible solution that is easy to use, designed for multi-commodity billing, and able to unify all processes into a single system.

NCS, a leading Singaporean IT company and MECOMS partner, proposed MECOMS and Microsoft Dynamics AX as a solution for Tuas Power‘s needs.

Mr Wong: “We were looking for a utility solution that supported at least 80% of our processes without customization. MECOMS met our requirements.“

Implementation

MECOMS is built on the Microsoft Dynamics AX platform which dramatically speeds up implementation times. Jeroen Hoebé, Country Manager at Ferranti: “A major advantage of MECOMS is the underlying Microsoft Dynamics AX ERP. You’re not building on a product alone; you’re building on the complete Microsoft ecosystem, which also includes the powerful SQL Server database, the SharePoint portal and the Microsoft BI and Office suites.“

Furthermore, the standard processes in MECOMS represent Ferranti‘s 35+ years of experience in the utility industry. Because Tuas Power chose to adopt most of these processes, very limited customizations were needed. The BEST project was implemented by NCS within 9 months, using the Sure Step implementation methodology.

The MECOMS system now handles CRM, contracting, billing, document management, meter data management, forecasting and business intelligence (BI). It is integrated with SAP for financials and OPC SCADA servers for metering data. A self-service web portal lets customers of Tuas power interact directly with the system.

Business value

Mr Hoebé: “The implementation at Tuas Power was delivered in time, delivered within budget and met the requirements of the business users.“

The MECOMS system offers a reliable and fully integrated environment with a user-friendly interface, requiring little training. End-users can create complex contract and billing arrangements through the flexible Contract Management module. All data is consistently stored in a unified database, enabling a detailed audit log and comprehensive BI capabilities for decision making.

Mr Wong: “Through the MECOMS web portal, our clients can easily adjust the supply of utilities according to their requirements.“

“Because of this unique system, our clients are able to manage their utilities supply effectively, thus enabling them to focus on their core business.“

– Ben Lau, Senior Vice President (BD) at Tuas Power –