Hydropower: Online Booster

Established in 1975 as a central government enterprise, National Hydropower Corporation (NHPC) is India's largest organization for hydropower development with an employee strength of 12,000+. Apart from 10 projects under construction with a total installed capacity of 4,622 MW, NHPC has a total installed generating capacity of 5,175 MW from 11 power stations. By 2017, it is targeting to achieve 20,000 MW.

NHPC was looking for a solution that could oversee the project management (right from planning to commissioning) encompassing operation and maintenance, human resource management, finance and accounts, and procurement and contracts.

Number Crunching

A quick look at the numbers and one can see the enormity of the implementation. IFS India has implemented the solution across 31 locations while NHPC itself has deployed it at 23 locations. Around 7 modules have been implemented while more than 140 sub-processes have been included, and the number of transaction users is 3,327. The project has been rolled out in the following locations-Kolkata, Siliguri, Chandigarh, Dehradun, Jammu, and Subansiri.

Highlights

A centralized implementation has been done which means that the production server is based at the NIC in Laxmi Nagar, Delhi. With 31 sites having gone live in just 28 months, NHPC has created a history. Moreover a centralized payroll & EPF processing system has been put in place, wherein currently more than 11,000 users are using the Employee Self-service (ESS) application.

The closing of NHPC's annual accounts for 2009-10 happened using the IFS applications. IFS India has also set up a help desk at NHPC and runs a 24x7 support center.

The information summarized through portals are extensively used by the top and middle management. IFS India has also deployed Primavera facilitating a 2-way integration for project management and SCADA for integration between IFS applications and SCADA.

Benefits

The implementation has reduced paper documentation by providing online formats for quickly entering and retrieving information. This has resulted in improved timeliness of information by permitting postings daily.

On the financial front, the balance sheet and the profit & loss accounts have been put online. Now the management can pinpoint accurate vendor liability at any given period.

From the project management perspective, there is a complete monitoring of project schedule and cost incurrence right from inception to commissioning. The payment cycle time for contractors has been reduced with an online interfacing with finance.

Any deviation can be reported as and when they occur, since there is online reporting of hindrances and incidences. Uniform codification is being used across NHPC for equipments, spares, stationery, and other inventory items. The booking of GRN and MIN can be done in real-time. Vouchers such as receipts and issues are system-generated. And, relevant account codes have been mapped to the inventory and asset masters based on the project and nature of transaction.

The system has the capability to reserve material against Material Requests. Inventory information for all the NHPC locations is available in the system and can be viewed by all concerned.