Centra a leading provider of business software solutions for eLearning and real-time collaboration,today announced that Reliant Energy is using Centra to ensure the successful
deployment of its SAP system upgrade to thousands of employees working in
two of the company's subsidiaries: Reliant Energy Arkla and Reliant Energy
Entex. Together, these companies provide natural gas to customers across
Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Oklahoma. With Centra's Web
collaboration platform, Reliant Energy has been able to quickly overcome
cultural barriers to change that can burden or delay major enterprise-wide
deployments, resulting in a fast and efficient rollout of the SAP upgrade to
2,000 remotely located employees, and continues to benefit the 6,000
employees company-wide who use the system daily.
The ability to instantly connect in real time over the Internet with Centra
to train widely dispersed employees has resulted in a compelling
return-on-investment for the company. "In calculating the travel expenses
we would have incurred through onsite training and communications, Centra
has more than paid for itself in the first seven months," said Linda Swift,
Project Manager for Reliant Energy. "Most significantly, by using Centra to
engage people online and demonstrate the look and feel of the SAP upgrade
virtually, we were able to reduce apprehension about the change and quickly
gain widespread acceptance - a powerful achievement by any standard."
With Centra, Reliant Energy can provide training to many more employees than
was previously possible. Added Swift, "Several remote offices have only one
or two employees, which made even one person's prolonged absence difficult
at best. Now everyone can participate in a highly interactive online
environment."
'Chat with the Chief' and 'Town Meetings'
As Reliant Energy employees have experienced the ease-of-use of Centra's
integrated voice-over-IP and immediate cost-savings over expensive video
conferencing and long-distance teleconferencing, the technology has quickly
spread throughout the company to facilitate online meetings and other forms
of real-time corporate communication.
According to Denise Breese, Manager of Business Improvement for Reliant
Arkla/Entex, "As our use of Centra progressed, we realized our organization
would benefit from finding a variety of applications for this technology.
We saw its benefits for training immediately, but we quickly began to adapt
it for other uses, such as HR Town Hall meetings, SAP Special Interest Group
meetings, and highly technical problem-solving sessions. The interactive
nature of Centra has also made it possible for us to conduct some lively
online conferences."
Since January 2002, Reliant Energy's Senior Vice President of Information
Technology and CIO, Ianne McCrea, has been using Centra to conduct monthly
"Chat with the Chief" online meetings with company personnel located across
the country. "Centra has enabled me to leverage ubiquitous, low-cost
Internet infrastructure to reach and interact with approximately 500
widely-dispersed IT employees instantly, a real step forward in my ability
to maintain a strong dialog with my department and to create a thriving
online community," commented McCrea.
Setting an early example at Reliant Energy, the Human Resource department
established online 'Town Meetings," using Centra first in May 2001. These
meetings enable the company's Vice President of HR in Houston to deliver
information to departments across the country on new programs and corporate
milestones.
Company-wide Communication Gets Even Easier
The recording feature of Centra's Web collaboration platform has become a
powerful tool in capturing knowledge and making it available to employees
on-demand. Reliant Energy is using Centra's instant recording tools to
capture two-to-three minute live 'snapshots' of someone explaining a typical
SAP transaction, and then making these available to users through a Web
site. The result has been tremendous. Even before the training was over,
Reliant Energy calculated about 6,000 hits on the Web page - a testament to
the high demand for this type of targeted, easy-to-access practical
know-how.
Scaleable Software Solution for eLearning and Collaboration
Used by more than 850 companies, government agencies, and universities
worldwide, Centra's scaleable software solutions are based on CentraOne?, an
open and extensible Web collaboration platform. Leveraging the core
capabilities of CentraOne, Centra offers a suite of compatible, real-time
Web collaboration applications, content composition tools, and knowledge
delivery systems that can be quickly installed on-site using Centra's rapid
deployment methodology, or conveniently accessed through Centra's secure,
full-service ASP. Centra's application interfaces - including those for
interactive Web meetings, virtual classrooms, and large-scale conferences -
ensure universal access to users through firewalls and proxy servers, and
deliver full-performance IP audio and video conferencing, application
sharing, and dynamic multimedia over low-bandwidth network connections
through a standard browser interface.
"Reliant Energy is a excellent example of how Centra's Web collaboration
environment can act as a valuable change agent, helping organizations to
achieve their key objectives more quickly - which in this case was the
rollout of their SAP system," said Joseph Gruttadauria, Centra's Senior Vice
President of Professional Services. "The propagation of Centra throughout
Reliant Energy demonstrates the clear value proposition we bring to
customers on multiple levels - helping to cut costs, accelerate key business
initiatives, increase productivity, and enable an effective virtual work
environment."
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