1. Sumter Electric Cooperative – Prophix story
Operating since: 1938
Head office: Sumterville, Florida
Annual revenue: > $150 million
Number of employees: > 250
G/L or ERP: NISC iVUE
Company website:
Company background:
Commonly known as SECO Energy, Sumter Electric is one of the largest electric distribution cooperatives in America, serving homes and businesses in seven counties of Central Florida. We are owned by the people we serve. SECO’s conservative approach to doing business pays dividends for the members and keeps the focus on providing excellent service to all.
Business problems that lead to evaluating CPM, adopting Prophix:
Using Excel for all of their financial processes.
They use an Oracle general ledger and could have gone with Hyperion.
They conduct activity-based costing. Budgeting for this was a pain. Added a segment to their account string to accommodate activity-based costing.
They could not conduct personnel planning. Allocations posed a particular problem.

2. Sumter Electric Cooperative – Prophix story
Business problems:
As an electrical company, they have employees who maintain their electrical lines. Some are independent contractors, some are employees.
Sumter needed a means to track their utilization. Accounting could track their specific activities, their utilization, and the demands on their time.
Demand planning/forecasting was tracked in Excel with macros. They budget how much electricity would be used in total, between groups of residential customers and large commercial clients, and seasonality (which alters demand).
They buy power from elsewhere, their power cost adjustment is affected by demand. Both of these factors cascade across their financial projections of all types.
Couldn’t find the fine details, which were housed in their Oracle general ledger.
Benefits:
Drill across to their Oracle general ledger via ODBC connection.
Cash flow / balance sheet planning.
Prophix solved their allocation problem by using Detailed Planning Manager (DPM) to create schedules.
Their department managers go into Prophix and allocate their electrical line workers to different activities/projects (types of work) based on forecasted demand.
Demand planning cube: we help them to replicate the Excel model by creating basic assumptions which the finance team plugs in. This drives budget and forecast results. E.g., finance types in how much power they will use for a given residential or consumer client. The cube tells them how much power for a given customer costs, how much they should charge this customer, and how much the use of this given customer’s power affects the prices/costs of commercial or residential power overall. Their base rate (cost) for all power is called the power cost adjustment (tracked in the cost of a kilowatt (e.g., cents).
Project planning / CapEx for building a plant, upgrading equipment, repairing or upgrading trucks/lines.
Dashboards – pre SmartMonitor, built by Prophix’s support group, to track power costs, capacity, and financial ratios.

3. Supporting data: Life cycle Industry (choose all that apply)
☐ New implementation
Implementation date:
☐ Preexisting customer YES
Original implementation date: Q4 2011
☐ Existing customer, upgrading
Original implementation date: ________________
Industry (choose all that apply)
☐ Agriculture, forestry, and fishing
☐ Professional services
☐ Financial services
☐ Retail
☐ Wholesale and distribution
☐ Telecommunications
☐ Healthcare
☐ Utilities YES
☐ Education
☐ Architecture, engineering, and construction
☐ Life science
☐ Transportation and logistics
☐ Manufacturing
☐ High tech
☐ Media and entertainment
☐ Government
☐ Non-profit

4. Supporting data: Solutions Capabilities ☐ Budgeting YES
☐ Automation YES
☐ Forecasting YES
☐ Prophix Mobile
☐ Reporting YES
☐ Data integration YES
☐ Strategic planning YES
☐ Business modeling YES
☐ Financial consolidation
☐ Microsoft platform integration
☐ Analysis YES
☐ Role-based security YES
☐ Profitability analysis YES
☐ Collaboration YES
☐ Personnel planning YES
☐ Flexible deployment
☐ Project planning YES
☐ Ad hoc reporting and visualization YES
☐ Revenue planning YES
☐ Capital expenditures planning YES
☐ Reporting and analytics YES
(dashboards and scorecards)