As one of Ohio’s investor-owned utility companies, Dayton Power & Light serves millions of people in West Central Ohio. In 1999, when it needed a partner to help it prepare for Ohio’s energy deregulation, it turned to Centric for help. We’ve worked together ever since.
Dayton Power and Light is one of Ohio’s investor-owned utility companies. In early 1999, the company served the energy needs for West Central Ohio. But later that year, Ohio’s lawmakers deregulated its energy market, allowing consumers to select their supplier.
To prepare for this transition, DP&L needed a consulting partner with utility industry experience and specific technical skills. Its leaders could have chosen to solely use one of the large, reputable consulting firms in the country, but instead, turned to Dave Rosevelt to deliver a significant portion of the project. DP&L had worked with Rosevelt in the past, and the company trusted his expertise.
Rosevelt was one of the founders of Practical Solutions, which would later become Centric Consulting.
Although the decision may have been considered a risk at the time, DP&L understood that better than anyone — the Energy and Utilities industry faces constant challenges, from federal and state regulations to evolving consumer expectations to new technology shifts. Consequently, going with a fresh-faced company could have been a career-limiting decision for DP&L’s leaders.
Instead, DP&L has truly thrived. The partnership has led to DP&L becoming Centric’s longest-standing client, sticking by us for 20 years, even amidst its own mergers and acquisitions, restructuring processes and transformations.
By today’s standards, 20 years may seem like a long time to align with one consultant, so what made DP&L decide to stay by our side for so long? We could only think of one thing: Unmatched Client Experiences.
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The Results: Building a Better Team
20 Years of Changes
For 20 years, DP&L has also consistently remained one of our largest clients. We have worked with them on strategic projects supporting their business and have positioned DP&L as an anchor account for our company.
In our first ten years with DP&L, we assisted the team in creating Electric Choice and helped decommission its natural gas arm with the divestiture to Vectren. As one of our first clients, the organization helped create the stability integral to building our company. DP&L’s relationship was fundamental in transforming our company from three to four employees into a workforce of 900-plus strong.
But as with any partnership, working together benefitted both of our companies.
In 2011, the AES Corporation acquired DP&L. Amidst the transition, Centric acted as the glue to help ensure no one missed a beat. We confidently ensured that the company could move forward on key strategic initiatives while Centric seamlessly supported DP&L’s back-office systems and processes. Our original and ongoing goal of working with DP&L is to make their lives easier and to deliver our services efficiently and effectively.
Over the years, we frequently saw opportunities encouraging DP&L to say “Yes” to changes that most other Energy and Utility Companies would decline. We were able to help them further translate business needs to IT and vice versa to ensure both groups were productive. When requirements defined additional new team members or that a new service line would ensure successful project execution, we would collaborate with DP&L about implementation.
But our work together wasn’t always about expansion. It was also about taking a step back and realizing when we were no longer needed. It’s just as important to know we can make this client more successful, even when it might mean it needs less Centric.
At first, our story with DP&L was about assisting with the state’s new deregulation and working on improving DP&L’s technology assets to address new competition. But the more we worked together, the more our relationship has become about effectively managing significant change with minimal or no disruption of service — both for transformations and our own growth.
20 Years of Collaboration
DP&L took a chance on a small startup 20 years ago. As partners, we have worked cohesively as a team across the company on projects relating to its customer service and billing system and many other critical IT systems. Other projects included standing up new companies, entering and exiting the unregulated generation market, divesting pieces of its business and navigating what it meant to be acquired by AES.
We also worked together to maintain and enhance DP&L’s ERP systems, such as Oracle E-Business Suite (Oracle EBS) and Oracle Work and Asset Management (Oracle WAM), integrating with the cloud, supporting analytics initiatives and performing upgrades along the way.
DP&L sees Centric as a true partner, and that partnership has proved to be a mutual source of stability through 20 years of technological advances and business transformations.
In our 20 years of work with DP&L, we’ve watched 20 years of Unmatched Experiences unfold before our eyes, and we couldn’t ask for anything more.