Evan O’Mahoney, chief information officer at CPS Energy, told the Municipal Utilities Committee that the utility will replace its nearly 25‑year‑old SAP-based enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform with Oracle as part of a broader digital transformation.

“We are still effectively using almost a 25 year old technology platform,” O’Mahoney said, noting SAP’s end of standard support at the end of calendar year 2027 as a primary driver for the replacement. He said the program’s total estimated cost is about $304 million and will be implemented in three staged releases, with the first go‑live targeted for the end of CPS Energy’s fiscal year 2027.

Nut graf: CPS Energy said the multiyear effort is intended to modernize back-office functions, improve employee and customer digital experiences, enable faster deployment of new rate- or service-related products, and provide better real-time data for operations and customer notifications.

Scope, timeline and governance

- Platform and partners: O’Mahoney said Oracle was selected as the replacement platform and Accenture as the implementation partner. PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) supported change management and Gartner was retained for independent verification and validation (IV&V).

- Phased releases: CPS intends a three-release program. Release 1 (end of fiscal 2027) focuses on finance, human resources, supply chain and core field-work/asset management. Release 2 (six months later) covers customer billing and online customer access. Release 3 (another six months after release 2) will complete enterprise asset management and advanced field services.

- Resourcing and oversight: O’Mahoney said nearly 40 internal employees have moved into full-time program roles and more than 200 subject-matter experts are participating in over 300 global-design workshops. A program governance model includes weekly financial reporting, quarterly briefings to the board's technology and resilience committee, and IV&V oversight from Gartner.

Questions from council and staff responses

Council members raised cybersecurity and equity concerns. One council member asked how CPS would guard against supply-chain or cloud breaches; O’Mahoney said the program has contractual security requirements, encryption architecture between CPS and Oracle Cloud, mobile-device management for endpoints, and direct escalation channels to Oracle leadership because CPS is making a wholesale shift to the vendor.

On access and equity, a council member asked whether the modernization would reduce in-person bill-payment options for seniors. CPS staff said customers may opt in to continue receiving paper bills and that CPS had recently expanded merchant payment options (for example, a QR barcode usable at multiple retailers) to improve access.

Budget and rate impacts

O’Mahoney said the $304 million investment was included in CPS Energy’s prior rate cases: planning funds were covered in the 2022 rate increase and the execution funding in the 2024 rate increase. CPS staff told the committee they do not expect a new rate increase specifically to fund this technology program.

Board and leadership comments

Rudy, a CPS Energy representative, thanked council and city staff for the collaborative planning and governance. “We did it right,” he said, noting the board’s and council’s roles in approving funding and setting oversight expectations.

Ending: CPS Energy said the program is in the global-design phase through the end of the fiscal fourth quarter, with configuration, testing and staged deployments to follow. Committee members did not take formal action on the presentation.