Ukrenergo national grid operator improves resiliency with Dynamics 365

Given the significant number of business applications used on a daily basis, Ukrenergo was keen to integrate them to improve control and management.

“We wanted to make our processes clearer and more transparent in order to speed up operations and do more data-driven decision-making. To do that, we needed to build a single digital core that would allow us to organize information to make both operational and strategic decisions”. — says Yevhen Vynnychuk, Head of Digital Transformation Department at Ukrenergo.

To ensure long-term use and align the management system with European standards, Ukrenergo has started implementing Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations.

“With Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations modules, we can adapt to the national legislation of Ukraine and the specifics of the energy industry,” says Olena Pastukhova, Program Lead and Business Architect at Ukrenergo. As a state-owned enterprise and a leader in country, Ukrenergo aims to contribute to the industry by introducing modern technologies.  “We need to change the mindset that it’s better to stay with legacy systems. That’s why we chose Microsoft, which offers cutting-edge technology that people are familiar and confident with, knowing that many businesses rely on it around the world.”

The implementation of Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations began with the automation of energy market processes, in particular, in the areas of Interconnections and Jet Energy. Other areas, such as Dispatch, Ancillary Services, Transmission and other market operations, are at the stage of pilot operation.

Thanks to the cooperation with Microsoft and technology partner OntargIT, Ukrenergo is successfully implementing new solutions that help to increase efficiency in daily management and operations. The use of Azure data centers for data storage has significantly increased their reliability.

“Our data is protected by Microsoft’s data center’s security system. That means we can continue business-as-usual knowing that our data flow is safe,” says Maryna Bezrukova, Management Board Member at Ukrenergo.

In addition, Ukrenergo has effectively automated the full revenue cycle with Dynamics 365 Finance and HR processes with Dynamics 365 Human Resources. The company has also improved its budget planning process. Currently, Ukrenergo is actively working on the automation of various daily processes, which aims to reduce the time spent on manual work. Additional transparency and control over data allowed Ukrenergo to act promptly.

“We now use Dynamics 365 to evaluate and develop our tariff and financial plan. The process of budget cycle is also four to five times quicker now and it’s much easier for us to make changes to it. The enterprise resource planning (ERP) system enables us to concentrate on our work rather than spending hours filling in data on Excel files. By relying on Power BI, we can also find any historical data in a minute and generate reports. There’s no need to analyze diverse information in different formats – we get everything in one place according to uniform standards with a guarantee of reliability. A few years ago, making a management decision was very complicated and time consuming. What took us weeks is now possible in less than a day.” – adds Maryna Bezrukova.

«We aim to build a comprehensive solution for based on Dynamics 365 and other Microsoft solutions because we don’t want multiple, small information systems running in different departments. With the system we have in place, we’ve now built up a sustainable foundation for the next five to 10 years», – concludes Yevhen Vynnychuk.

Ukrenergo is confident that the implementation of a comprehensive ERP solution for the entire company will improve its future performance.