Solution Overview

Industry: Utilities

Revenue: USD 386 Million

Country: United States

Enterprise Applications: PeopleSoft Financial Management and Enterprise Human Capital Management

Operating System(s): Microsoft Windows NT 4.0

Database: Oracle

Company Profile: Empire District Electric Company provides electric service to approximately 162,000 customers in southwest Missouri, southeast Kansas, northeast Oklahoma, and northwest Arkansas. The investor-owned utility also provides fiber optic and internet services, customer information software services, and has an investment in close-tolerance, custom manufacturing. In addition, Empire provides water service in three incorporated communities in Missouri. Based in Joplin, Missouri, Empire was organized in 1909 to meet the needs of a growing region.

Empire Electric Switches to TomorrowNow Support Services

Changing Support Vendors Prevents Forced Upgrade

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Empire Electric Company had been running PeopleSoft 7.51 for several years, and was pleased with the stability of its platform. The company was able to meet all of its needs on its current version and had no reason to upgrade. "Our business processes haven't changed, the software hasn't changed, so the bugs have pretty well worked themselves out by now," explained Scott Malcolm, Manager of Information Systems at Empire.

However, when vendor support for the release retired, the cost went up, and the value declined. Malcolm explains how the company was no longer getting an appropriate value from the vendor for the amount it was spending on maintenance. "Ours was an unsupported release," he said. "So the only thing our maintenance dollars were buying us was access to their knowledge base." The vendor no longer worked on new problems; it provided fixes only for known issues. Malcolm says Empire grew tired of hearing that its issues would be fixed in the next release when they weren't going to upgrade any time soon. TomorrowNow offered an appropriately priced support alternative that would let them stay on their release as long as they wanted.