The Challenge

Capital Power is a North American power producer headquartered in Edmonton, Alberta. The company develops, acquires, operates and optimizes power generation from a variety of energy sources.

Entering 2013, Capital Power owned more than 3,600 megawatts of power generation capacity at 15 facilities across North America. An additional 595 megawatts of owned generation (including the Shepard Energy Centre) is under construction or in advanced development.

Capital Power places an important strategic focus on annual business planning, requiring all management to develop, collaborate on, and maintain annual business plans. The plans are based on the goals and objectives of the CEO which translate hierarchically down and are supported by more specific goals and objectives of various management strata.

Previously, business planning was implemented manually using Word templates and e- mail—a practice common across many businesses today. This ad-hoc approach made it difficult to collaborate, review, and enforce the business planning process. To overcome this shortfall and maximize the potential benefit from business planning, Capital Power needed to find a way to better manage these processes.

The Solution

DevFacto worked closely with Capital Power to develop a custom solution that is less cumbersome, more economical, and more accurately targeted to Capital Power’s needs than an off-the-shelf product.

BPS is a web application that integrates with Capital Power’s existing Oracle ERP to facilitate the business planning process. It allows users to enter their business plan data into the program utilizing specific text fields such as “Executive Summary” and “Strategic Positioning” as well as a number of “Objectives” and “Risks”. Objectives can be delegated, tagged with cross-functional support requests, supported and rejected, etc.

This formalized process increases visibility and traceability of each business plan and streamlines overall facilitation of the documents. BPS enhances vertical and cross- functional collaboration to ensure that communication is maintained throughout the planning process.

The custom-built BPS solution has empowered CPC to:

Improve both vertical and cross-functional collaboration
Enhance process controls to ensure quality and consistency in documentation
Enforce and visualize how business plans support the organizations higher level objectives

“The BPS solution has significantly improved our business planning process. Our entire management team is now able to collaborate on the strategic and tactical goals of the company in a clear and organized way. DevFacto understood our needs and worked with us to build a solution that met our requirements and surpassed our expectations.”
Darryl Vleeming, CIO, Capital Power Corporation