WEB Aruba’s Lucia Werleman may be the island country’s best ambassador

The ice was broken almost the instant the ESC Partners support team walked into the video production room at Oracle Energy and Water’s Customer Edge conference. All it took was one mention of where their video’s subject, Lucia Werleman, lived and worked.

When the video guys heard about Lucia’s island home of Aruba, she got regaled with a gushing story from one of the team’s recent trips to the popular tourist destination, complete with compliments of how soft the water there made his skin.

The water there is one of Lucia’s top priorities since she’s the acting Head of the Project Department and project leader at the country’s utility, W.E.B. Aruba, which has been making the local water good for your skin and better to drink since 1932.

Today W.E.B. Aruba is “at a crossroads,” according to Lucia (who has personally been with the company for two decades). “We’ve got to grow more efficient in our business processes. It’s so important for us to get centralized, to step away from silo-thinking to end-to-end business process thinking.”

Aruba’s planning process of energy and water production around that crossroads has been a bit unique because the island itself is quite unique. They have a customer base of around 50,000 people, but they have to factor in getting a 20% bump over that base every day in the form of tourists, resulting in about a million extra (and temporary) customers a year.

But, temporary or permanent, Lucia and the W.E.B. Aruba team want each and every one of those customers to be as happy as the video production fella—hence the forward-thinking planning for a smart city—or, rather, a smart island—transformation.

Lucia could talk for hours about her unique customer base and the interesting challenges that brings for her combined utility—W.E.B. Aruba added electricity production in 1958—but, for this video, she wanted to focus on how a connected enterprise will bring her team an easier work day every single day (and bring her customers better experiences, too).

“It all boils down to combining people, processes, and technology in a better, smarter way,” she said, adding that she—and the whole team—have felt very supported by both ESC Partners and Oracle team as they move through this process, which is a level of trust both companies are quite proud of.

“We are in an era of digital transformation as well as an energy transformation—in this industry overall, yes, but specifically every single day at my utility,” she added. “We have so many different legacy systems we are trying to integrate at the moment, and it is very challenging. That level of challenge absolutely requires an integrated solution like Oracle and the right team to help us make the transition as easy as possible—that’s ESC.”

To view the full interview with Lucia, just click here.

ABOUT W.E.B. ARUBA: 

W.E.B. Aruba has been producing water for the island since 1932 and began producing power in 1958. Over the years, the utility has grown into a company with more than 300 employees providing Aruba’s daily water and electricity needs. Every day, the utility produces an average of 33 million liters of drinking water and generates 110 MWs of electricity.

ABOUT ORACLE: 

Oracle offers integrated suites of applications plus secure, autonomous infrastructure in the Oracle Cloud. For more information about Oracle (NYSE: ORCL), please visit us at www.oracle.com. Learn more about Oracle Energy and Water solutions here.

ABOUT ESC PARTNERS:

ESC Partners is building smarter cities from utilities work to public works with solutions in the Oracle Cloud. Let us help you take full advantage of all the Oracle SaaS options available or walk you through our personalized Care-as-a-Service (CaaS) solutions. Just send us a note via the contact form, and we'll circle back within 48 hours.