NW Natural’s Journey to Modern & Compliant Document Presentment & Repository
NW Natural partnered with Auritas to modernize its legacy customer document infrastructure and prepare for SAP IS-U. The outdated CIS, built on unsupported AFP tools, posed risks to compliance, branding, and communication. Auritas implemented SAP Document Presentment and SAP Extended ECM by OpenText in a phased rollout, first stabilizing operations, then modernizing the customer experience with a cloud-ready architecture. The result: improved efficiency, reduced risk, lower costs, and a scalable foundation for future transformation.
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Operational Efficiency
NWN outsourced print, stabilized systems, reduced risk, and empowered users.
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Compliance & Visibility
Enhanced compliance, visibility, and training with real-time updates and reporting.
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Modern Documents
Modernized and standardized documents, improved accessibility and engagement.
About NW Natural
NW Natural is an American publicly traded utility headquartered in Oregon, US. Primarily a natural gas distributor, the company services residential, commercial, and industrial customers in Western Oregon and Southwest Washington in the Pacific Northwest.
Founded in 1859, the company has approximately 800,000 customers and revenues of over $1.2 billion annually.
About NW Natural
NW Natural is an American publicly traded utility headquartered in Oregon, US. Primarily a natural gas distributor, the company services residential, commercial, and industrial customers in Western Oregon and Southwest Washington in the Pacific Northwest.
Founded in 1859, the company has approximately 800,000 customers and revenues of over $1.2 billion annually.
The Challenge
NW Natural (NWN) is a long-standing SAP customer and is currently operating on SAP S/4HANA. As part of a broader business transformation journey, the customer was modernizing its IT environment and preparing for the implementation of SAP IS-U. Ensuring their ecosystem was ready to support these advancements, particularly in customer-facing operations, was a priority.
Historically, NWN relied on a legacy Customer InformationSystem (CIS) developed 20+ years ago. This outdated system included their customer billing, document generation, and notice delivery processes, but it lacked modern capabilities and hindered effective communication with customers. The document presentation layer and embedded billing functionality were inflexible and posed compliance and reliability risks.
Adding to the complexity, NWN’s document generation relied on aging Advanced Function Printing (AFP) tools no longer supported by the legacy CIS. This not only compromised output reliability but also introduced significant risk internally and externally, with process integration errors and communication processes inefficiencies.
To support its modernization goals and compliance requirements, NWN sought to upgrade its customer document infrastructure, implement a compliant and scalable document repository, and ensure that all customer-facing communications, from bills to notices, were secure, brand-aligned, and regulation-ready.
• Outdated Advanced Function Printing (AFP) tools no longer supported by the legacy CIS.
• Legacy customer communication system posed significant risks to output reliability and compliance.
• External print vendor lacked a disaster recovery plan, exposing the company to potential business continuity and regulatory risks.
• Existing print templates were outdated and did not reflect NWN’s current branding.
• External payment processing vendor (Paymetus) integration with new solutions.
• Inflexible document processing limited the ability to modernize and scale customer communication efforts.
The Solution
NWN partnered with Auritas to implement a modern and scalable solution for customer document creation, presentation, and storage by deploying SAP Document Presentment by OpenText and SAP Extended ECM by OpenText. These tools replaced outdated legacy systems and introduced a flexible, future-ready foundation for managing and delivering critical customer communications.
Auritas addressed a wide range of customer accessibility issues and document types, ensuring the new solution could fully support NWN’s operational and regulatory needs. The scope included:
• 19 Bill Formats
• 11 Notices
• 110 Letters
• 16 Additional Document Types
To deliver a seamless transition from legacy systems to a modern platform, Auritas executed the solution in partnership with internal stakeholders and external vendors.
• Recreated all document templates using composition software, ensuring consistency with existing formats while preparing for future enhancements
• Outsourced printing and mailing to OPP, a vendor with built-in disaster recovery capabilities for business continuity
• Maintained a Master Document List in SharePoint to provide centralized oversight and version control
Additionally, by outsourcing document output to a geographically divergent vendor with its own disaster recovery plan, NWN significantly strengthened its business continuity posture.
To support the effective management of the unstructured data outputs, Auritas implemented SAP Extended ECM by OpenText (xECM) as the document repository. This ensures documents are not only archived in a compliant manner but are also easily accessible across the organization.
Results & Benefits
The solution led to significant results:
Next Steps
NWN is working with Auritas on a variety of ways to leverage xECM content repository to support various business functions.
With the demonstrated expertise in the OpenText portfolio, NWN engaged Auritas to optimize and stabilize their AP automation program, which leveraged SAP Vendor Invoice Management (VIM) by OpenText. Auritas became then the go-to partner for system upgrades, issue resolution and enhancements, and on-going support with AuriCare, AMS program.