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Project Details

ATCO

If you’ve ever driven by a construction site, you will most likely see the familiar black and gold ATCO logo.

  • Client Info:

    Microsoft App Holing Ltd,Australia Area

  • Project Handover:

    October 25th, 2024 in Square Hall New York.

  • Services:

    IT Consultation, Design Cloud Management

  • Live Project:

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ATCO CASE STUDY – cAPITAL plANNING

If you’ve ever driven by a construction site, you will most likely see the familiar black and gold ATCO logo.  Fun fact, ATCO is an acronym for the Alberta Trailer Company which started in 1947 renting utility trailers in Calgary.  Fast forward to today and ATCO is a 3.5-billion-dollar multinational company with subsidiaries including ATCO Gas and ATCO Electric – distributing energy across Western Canada, Puerto Rico, Mexico, and Chile.

Now, building gas and electric distribution and transmission infrastructure is definitely a capital-intensive business.  For ATCO’s Oracle EPM capital planning implementations, I was the vendor executive sponsor, and BluMarble’s chief architect, Juan Alvarez designed the capital planning applications for both organizations.  The purpose of the applications was to budget and track ATCO Gas and ATCO Electric’s large project portfolios and manage capitalization, track fixed assets, calculate depreciation and amortization, and manage regulatory considerations.  They were using Excel and home-grown systems to do this work and were having all the classic Excel and legacy system issues.

Handling the regulatory budget was of major importance to ATCO.  Infrastructure project development costs needed to be tracked (typically over a number of years) and then presented to the Alberta Utilities Commission in order to justify rate increases to consumers as the new infrastructure was brought on-line. The numbers in the EPM applications were used in the preparation of rate case justifications.

These capital planning applications were integrated with ATCO’s ERP – at that time E-business suite (specifically the Fixed Asset and Project Accounting modules).   Once the capital plan was approved, capital costs flowed from the capital budget  into the financial budget applications.

One very valuable benefit of these applications to ATCO was their ability to store multiple sets of books.  One for the internal budget, another for presentation to regulatory authorities, and another for strategic planning.  This was accomplished through Oracle EPM’s ability to house multiple scenarios in one application, and then stack those scenarios for comparison and analysis.   An additional complexity handled by the system was that each budget book had a different time horizon.  The internal budget was 5 years, regulatory 3, and the strategic budget went out 7 years.    All at different levels of granularity.  Different people managed the different books, and the software allowed them to work in parallel as required.

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Tom comes to BluMarble after stints at Oracle, AST, and IBM. He has over 10 years Oracle EPM experience, specifically in the marketing and selling of services to Canadian organizations.  Customers he has worked with include SaskTel, ATCO, Telus, BC Housing, and the University of Alberta.   Tom is responsible for helping us evangelize BluMarble’s capabilities, both with the Oracle Sales organization and with prospective customers.

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Dheeraj has over 15 years of experience with the Oracle EPM product set and has worked on many successful Oracle engagements across Canada.  With BluMarble, Dheeraj leads our team of Oracle EPM consultants and is currently working on three EPM initiatives at Lululemon. These include a Strategic Planning model, Master Data Management with EDMCS, and a Sales Analysis application.  He also led our infrastructure project at the City of Calgary.

Dheeraj started his Hyperion career in Infrastructure support at Technolab’s support lab in Montevideo and was responsible for numerous Hyperion on-premise installations and upgrades.  He joined Technolab Canada in 2013, and worked with customers such as UBC, InterPipeline, ATCO, Barrick Gold, and Telus.  After leaving the Hackett Group in 2017, he joined KPMG as a senior implementation consultant.  In addition to being a lead developer on the TD project with Juan, he also worked under Juan at a large Oracle EPM implementation at Metrolinx.

Dheeraj’s mission is to deliver successful projects using our EPM methodology and mentor a new generation of BluMarble Oracle EPM consultants.

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Karen also has over 15 years of experience implementing and supporting Oracle EPM clients. She has a perfect blend of technical and application skills, that along with a strong ability to communicate allows her to understand what is necessary to lead our Managed Services team and deliver these services to our client base.

Karen also started her Hyperion career with CIS in Mexico and joined Technolab Canada in 2015.  She worked closely under Juan’s leadership in a number of implementation projects including Telus, ATCO, and TD Bank.  Her mission is to build a strong Managed Services practice that supports our clients and ensures business continuity.

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Stephanie comes to us from Numinus, where she was executive assistant to the CEO.  Prior to Numinus, she spent 12 years with BC Housing in various business development and EA positions.

Stephanie’s role at BluMarble is to support the administration and marketing of our firm.  She brings her high energy and creative spirit, along with a high level of professionalism to her work.

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John Brkopac is CEO and co-founder of BluMarble. John previously held management positions at Arbor Software, Hyperion and Oracle. His focus was the (now legendary) Essbase multidimensional database, Business Intelligence, and Enterprise Performance Management.

Prior to BluMarble, John founded Technolab Canada in 2009.  Technolab’s focus was the delivery of Hyperion Implementation Services, Managed Services, and Infrastructure Services.  The firm had a string of successful Hyperion implementations including projects at UBC, Teck Resources, Atco, SFU, and Telus.  In addition, Technolab developed a large roster of Managed Services clients that included Barrick Gold, SunLife, Enerplus, Yamana Gold, and Fairfax Financial.  Techolab Canada was acquired by the Hackett Group in 2014.

John’s mission is to develop BluMarble as the premier Oracle Implementation and support services firm in Canada.  This means being singularly solely on Oracle EPM and developing a culture deep in Oracle experience and success.  He is committed to building a firm that values and develops people.  And ensuring those people have the expertise and mentoring to deliver success in the projects they are assigned.

On a personal note, John resides in Vancouver and has been involved with Toastmasters since 1999.  He earned his Distinguished Toastmaster designation in 2019.  John joined his first “men’s group” in 2008 and currently mentors young men in both their business careers and personal lives.  He has a long association with personal development, starting with NLP in the mid 1980’s.  He is long time practitioner of the Wim Hof method, biohacking, and pushing the envelope.  You can find him cold dipping in Lynn Creek most every Saturday morning.

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He was responsible for managing a team of EPM implementation consultants across Canada.  His successes include a one year project with TD Bank, migrating their extensive library of Hyperion applications (Essbase, Planning, HFM, DRM) to the Cloud.

Juan joined John at Technolab Canada in 2011 as Hyperion architect after almost 10 years of implementing Hyperion with CIS, the largest Hyperion implementation firm in Latin America.  Working on large scale implementation projects, Juan developed his EPM specific methodology which incorporates best practices in what to do and what not to do in implementations.  He brings this approach to BluMarble with clients such as First Nations Health, Lululemon, and the City of Calgary.

Juan’s mission has been, and continues to be, the development and mentoring of our personnel into expert Oracle EPM consultants.  This entails building their technical, domain, and interpersonal skills to successfully architect solutions to our customers problems and develop strong trusted relationships with our customer’s personnel.  Juan has also taken on the responsibility of incorporating BluMarble Mexico, allowing BluMarble to grow a near shore Oracle EPM practice to augment our Canadian resources.

On a personal note, Juan resides in Toronto and is a big fan of the Toronto Blue Jays. He has a love of running and has competed in many competitive events.  Notables are full marathons in Sao Paulo, Brazil and Mexico City, as well as a half marathon in Edmonton.  Juan has a passion for Real Estate and manages a real estate investment firm in Mexico.

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Luis manages BluMarble's Mexican operations.  He has 15 years Oracle EPM experience and is fully bilingual (English/Spanish).  Luis spent 10 years in Canada working with John and Juan architecting EPM systems before returning to Mexico.  He has worked in projects with diverse Canadian clients such as Simon Fraser University, ATCO, and Interpipeline.  Luis is also an expert in Robotic Process Automation software and processes (RPA) and incorporates this technology in many of the projects he leads.

When not developing systems, Luis is a big baseball fan and plays softball in a recreational men's league.  He is also a musician and enjoys playing Rock n' Roll om his guitar.

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