One of America's leading power utilities produces and sells electricity to more than 5 million customers in 11 states. The 100-year-old, publicly held company owns the nation's largest electricity transmission system and operates eight regulated regional utilities. Thus, like any public company, it must handle its financial affairs efficiently and profitably and report on them to shareholders and regulatory agencies; it also has to demonstrate that its financial practices comply with an array of regulations that govern issues related to rates for service, spending oversight and economic development.

By 2003, the team had succeeded in reducing their duplicate payments by more than half per year and the auditors' fees to about $300,000. But the substantial amount still being paid out motivated the accounting group to look for a definitive solution.

The company's director of accounting services considered this a serious problem. In 2003, he heard from the vice president of the company's internal audit group that software from Oversight Systems might be able to help. The director met with Oversight's representatives, and they agreed to work together toward a solution.

Oversight's software is designed to work with a variety of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, and this capability was the initial attraction for the accounting group. "We are a PeopleSoft shop, and they said their product supported PeopleSoft Financials," the director recalls.