Texas Water Utility Selects $21-Million Enterprise System

Published: August 30, 2006

by Alex Woodie

The San Antonio Water System has signed a 10-year, $21.1-million contract for a new Web-based Enterprise Resource Software System (ERSS) founded in .NET technologies, the water district's main contractor, Hansen Information Technologies, announced last week. The new ERSS is expected to boost the scalability of the district's billing system and enable it to better monitor its 9,600 miles of water mains.

The San Antonio Water System, or SAWS, is responsible for providing drinking water and wastewater removal for the seventh largest city in the United States. The district, which brought in $328 million in revenues, is embarking on an ambitious plan to overhaul its IT infrastructure. Rancho Cordova, California-based Hansen, a specialist in government systems, was tapped to manage the construction of the new system.

Hansen, which writes CIS billing, GIS, asset management, fleet, and bar-coding software, will assemble for SAWS a variety of hardware and software vendors in completion of the contract, including Hewlett-Packard for new X64 servers, Oracle for a new database, Lawson Software for financials and human resources software, Selectron Technologies for interactive voice response (IVR), and JPMorgan's Sympro treasury management software. Blue Heron Consulting will provide quality assurance and oversee the implementation of the project, which is expected to last 28 months.

"The solution we put together for SAWS is based on our latest Microsoft .NET technology," says Carlos Thomas, managing director of Hansen's CIS and tax billing department. "The Hansen solution will allow SAWS to start the process with the developer, create the assets and billing accounts, manage the billing process, and pass financial information to the G/L at the end of the day. It's effective, efficient, and completely scalable."