South East Water moves to Microsoft Great Plains from JD Edwards World
7th November 2005
South East Water, the main supplier of drinking water to the south east of England , has purchased a Microsoft Business Solutions - Great Plains system from Microsoft Business Solutions partner M4 Systems.
In a bid to improve ease of use and reporting capabilities, South East Water moved away from its legacy JD Edwards system running on an IBM AS/400 to a Microsoft SQL Server 2000 based system running Microsoft Great Plains. The new system, which went live this month, manages all general ledger, accounts payable, sundry debtors and fixed asset functions, with additional e-invoicing and e-requisitioning software supported by M4 Systems.
South East Water anticipates significant benefits from the new system, most notably a reduction in paper based processes and easier integration with its existing architecture.
"This is just phase one of our project," said Jo Hurley, IT Project Manager, South East Water. "We have taken the opportunity to review all business processes with the aim of streamlining the way we handle our information. By switching to Microsoft Great Plains and with the additional functionality supported by M4 systems we anticipate many improvements in our finance function by shortening the process cycles and by automating transactions."
As part of a strategic Microsoft investment, South East Water runs Microsoft SQL Server 2000 to host Microsoft Great Plains, Microsoft Office and Microsoft Sharepoint Portal Server for its intranet.
