Basin Electric selects Saros to power information management solution; Energy utility's client-server initiative reduces operating costs while increasing productivity through use of Saros technology.

BELLEVUE, Wash.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 27, 1995--Saros Corp. announced today that Basin Electric Power Cooperative, a consumer-owned electric cooperative serving 126 rural electric member systems in eight states, has selected and installed Saros as its enterprise document management solution.

Implementation of the document management solution represents a significant step in Basin Electric's evolution from a mainframe environment to an enterprise client-server network.

Basin Electric's goal is to provide a safe, reliable, and easy-to-use enterprise-wide information library that will allow the Cooperative to become independent of less efficient mainframe-based technology and expensive hard-copy filing.

As a result, the utility intends to realize significant cost efficiencies and to manage electronic information as a re-usable asset -- key advantages in an increasingly competitive electric utilities industry.

"The utility industry is probably one of the last to undergo this kind of competitive change," explained Bill Roach, supervisor of Basin Electric's records management department. We have to compete on the open market now, and aside from cost, there is nothing to differentiate one kind of electricity from another.

"It doesn't come in different colors, and you can't put bells and whistles on it. What you can do is make sure you're running the tightest ship possible. To that end, we feel that the use of a document management system will help us hold down costs and operate more efficiently."

Basin Electric is implementing a comprehensive IT renovation. Moving from a mainframe environment to a client-server architecture is intended to allow a more serviceable and reliable computing infrastructure. In conjunction with this transition, Basin Electric has significantly revised and updated its end-user desktops.

In addition to selecting a standard document management user interface, the implementation involved the evaluation and integration of several desktop products, including a switch to Microsoft Office and an immediate enterprise-wide roll-out of new 486/66 client machines.

"The new software environment has made it easier for us to handle and move information electronically than it was in the hardcopy world," said Roach.

"Even though we supported filing documents electronically on our old system, a lot of people shied away from it and instead would print documents to file them. It was a culture in which you had to send things out by hardcopy to make sure everybody was seeing it. We'd have 15 different copies of a single document floating around. With Saros we're finally getting away from that."

The Basin Electric Solution

Saros has provided Basin Electric an enterprise site license for Saros Document Manager, the document management system based on Saros Mezzanine. Saros Mezzanine manages the complete document life cycle and features distributed document search capabilities, version control, object-level security and access control, back-up mechanisms, and archiving.

Saros Document Manager provides all Mezzanine Enterprise Librarian services plus integration of routine tasks such as printing, viewing documents, sending electronic mail, workflow, and more, all from a single graphical user interface.

Basin Electric's new document management system will provide its employees and its subsidiaries instant access to tens of thousands of files from Mezzanine libraries at its headquarters and remote facilities. Before implementing Saros, maintaining separate repositories in these facilities was a challenge because it took substantial effort to sort through redundant or out-of-date versions of documents -- both on-line and in hardcopy form.

Furthermore, while the bulk of the Cooperative's engineering and administrative staffs are headquartered at the Bismarck office, operations and maintenance departments are located at its outlying facilities. The distance between facilities often hinders collaboration.

Now, Mezzanine network services will help bridge those gaps by providing access to pertinent information independent of both the user's location and the physical location of the files themselves.

"These folks need to work together, and there are always changes in specifications -- from work order packages to design changes to operating changes," said Roach. "We need a single place to access that information and we believe Saros provides it."

Because Basin Electric intends to record and track each version of every file stored in its libraries, employees can retrieve the latest version of critical technical and regulatory documents without concern for library location.

And, by allowing employees to find files using logical descriptive and content-based searches, the document management system is intended to increase productive output by eliminating time wasted deciphering network jargon and 8.3 file names to find a file.

Because Mezzanine library services operate in a distributed fashion across peer servers, the end-user desktop information appears to originate from a single source. However, shared information actually exits in all four libraries, managed and shared across the network through Mezzanine.

"Our biggest challenge is distance and weather," Roach said. "We're tied to the telecommunication systems. Here in the Dakotas, one of the first things to go down in extreme weather or an emergency is that network. That's why we have separate libraries. If one link fails, we've got to be able to access that information from another library."

Prior to Saros Document Manager, the utility relied primarily on hardcopy transfer of documents throughout its enterprise. For example, the Federal Register, which contains important updates on regulatory action in Washington, D.C., previously arrived daily at the company's Bismarck, N.D. headquarters and employees would route it manually.

Complete circulation of the information often took as long as two months. Today, Basin Electric downloads the Federal Register daily and puts it at employees' fingertips by providing access through Saros Document Manager.

Basin Electric plans to exploit Saros Document Manager's file tracking capability to distribute updates on crucial operating and emergency procedures, and to record each employee's review of this crucial safety material. To meet workplace safety requirements, Basin Electric must verify employee attendance at training functions and access to training materials.

Through the document management system, administrators can determine which employees have accessed which material and when. Since regulation effecting such procedures can change on a daily basis, Saros Document Manager is intended to provide employees across the enterprise with a single, reliable source of information and notification.

That power, Roach said, represents an advantage Basin Electric can use to establish, maintain and increase its competitive edge.

"Since 1989, Mezzanine has provided a robust, safe, and cost-saving alternative to the mission-critical mainframe or mini-computer based information management infrastructure," said Mike Kennewick, executive vice-president of sales and marketing and co-founder of Saros.

"Saros Document Manager packages the proven power of Mezzanine and brings it to Basin's end-user desktops in a way that adds immediate value to the information itself and is easy for people to learn and use."

About Basin Electric

Basin Electric Power Cooperative and its subsidiaries are a diversified energy group that generate electricity and produce natural gas from coal and byproducts from the coal gasification process. Together they employ approximately 1,800 people.

Founded in 1961, Basin Electric is a consumer-owned, regional cooperative headquartered in Bismarck, ND. It operates 3,304 megawatts (mw) of electric generating capacity for its 126 rural electric member systems in Colorado, Iowa, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming, and for non member customers.

About Saros Corp.

Saros Corp. is the industry's leading enterprise document management company, with more than 400,000 seats sold to commercial and government customers worldwide. Saros products are sold directly to end-user customers through the Saros sales, service and consulting organization, and Saros-authorized resellers.

Saros, co-founder of the Document Management Alliance (with IBM, Novell and Xerox), has technology and marketing agreements with a number of major hardware and software vendors, and is the preeminent provider of OEM document management technology. Founded in 1986, the privately-held company is based in Bellevue. -0-

1995 Saros Corp. Saros and Mezzanine are registered trademarks and Enterprise Librarian is a trademark of Saros Corp. Microsoft and Windows are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corp. Other trademarks are used for identification purposes only and are the property of their respective holders.

CONTACT: Saros Corp.

Doug Duffield, 206/990-0316, [e-mail]

or

Waggener Edstrom

Darren Stordahl, 503/245-0905, [e-mail]

or

Basin Electric

Bill Roach, 701.223.0441

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