Software Solutions for Utilities

United Utilities Case Study

eRespond goes multi-utility in United Utilities to drive out benefits of common processes

United Utilities is responsible for providing the water and sewerage services for Northwest England, with approaching 3 Million customers (and a population of 7M). United Utilities operates in a highly regulated environment where many of the key performance indicators measured by the regulators are customer service related. As with all utilities some of the key challenges for United Utilities are to continue to improve customer satisfaction ratings and key performance indicators while reducing costs and meeting investment targets. To ensure that United Utilities were equipped to meet those challenges for the 21st Century, United Utilities embarked on an ambitious programme to upgrade their technology, systems and business processes in a project known as Workforce Management (WFM). One of the main goals of the project was to drive efficiencies in the business by standardising business processes and systems across both the water and waste water business.

This required a complete overhaul of the current systems and processes from customer contact through, fault and work management, to implementation of a new mobile workforce management capability. From a business process perspective some of the primary objectives of the WFM project were to significantly improve customer service and increase efficiencies in fault management. LET Systems and eRespond were chosen as an innovative component in the overall WFM solution to:

• Improve Event Identification and Localisation
• mprove customer feedback and proactive communication, and support the rate of 'first call resolution'
• Provide a significantly improved Event Management capability, managing the event from creation to closure with enhanced awareness of the current scale and severity of the event
• Reduce the turnaround period for producing management and regulatory reports through more accurate, timely and available historical event report data.
• Manage the 'Flooding Register', as required by the regulator OFWAT, and generally improve the accuracy of waste water flooding and event data.

eRespond forms a crucial component of the WFM solution, linking customer contact and work management and the mobile crews making event information from the field directly available at the centre for communication to the customer.

Utility Profile

Key Data:

3M Properties (c. 7M population)
40000km of water mains
32000km of sewers
150 Water Treatment Works
600 Pumping Stations
c.600 Waste Water Treatment Works
Clean Water Production: 1900 Ml/Day
Waste Water Treatment: 1380 Ml/Day

Industries:

Water and Waste Water

Region:

Northwest England (service territory for CW and WW is slightly different)

Goals:

• United Utilities to become a world class utility
• Enhance Customer experience and satisfaction
• Improve efficiency through standardised cross-utility business processes and auto-scheduling and dispatch of work
• Improve event management
• Improve regulatory performance across the board
• 'vanilla flavour' implementation

Challenge:

• Build Network Model
• Meeting tight implementation timescales
• Upgrade, integrate and cut-over an existing version of eRespond on-site

Products Bought:

eRespond Event Management, Network, Customer, Mobile and Event Reporting modules.

Benefits:

• State of the art waste water and clean water regulatory solution
• Standard integration
• Future-proofed technology
• Off-the-shelf solution (minimal customisation)

Implementation

Timescale:

11 months from Blueprint to Go-Live.

Integration:

In concert with IBM, as the system integration and SAP implementation partner, eRespond was integrated with SAP CRM, SAP ECC, and SAP BI using standard interfaces. The interfaces used a combination of integration technology, including SOAP-based webservices, eRespond's standard JMS adapter, and direct database connections.

Network Model:

United Utilities' clean water network model did not exist as a coherent entity in any one system but required to be manually constructed in eRespond. It was created using the in-built user interface facilities in eRespond designed to build and manage a network model. The initial network model was created inside a period of 4 weeks.

Business Benefits

eRespond brings significant benefits to the United Utilities right across a number of business areas:

Customer Relationships: Improved event feedback. Customers get immediate feedback on the progress of their event, as eRespond is used as a 'service' to provide real-time information to the call agent while the call is in progress. In addition eRespond provides information on the properties that will be affected by future planned events - allowing more efficient proactive communication.

Event Management: United Utilities is the first water utility in the UK to implement a dedicated event management system, recognising the benefits in terms of better event identification, and improved situational awareness of their duty managers and schedulers. The sophisticated event management and monitoring features in eRespond support the duty managers in taking a more supervisory role during major incidents, allowing them to get out of 'firefighting' mode.

Reporting Benefits: In a highly regulated business water business United Utilities spends vast man hours collecting and collating data for both management information, and regulatory reports. The introduction of eRespond has had a 2 fold benefit. The improved event management features in eRespond mean there is more support in providing a more accurate view of properties affected, and for how long, than there was previously. This means there is less time spent 'correcting' the data post-event. In addition there are significant dedicated event reporting features in eRespond that are unique in providing an accurate reporting 'picture' at a few clicks of the mouse, including features to automatically update and maintain the flooding register.

Objectives Fulfilled

The WFM project was implemented on time and on budget to provide the systems framework for United Utilities to achieve their overall goal of becoming a world class utility. The new system landscape covered the full range of functionality from customer relationship management, event management, mobile workforce management, and regulatory reporting.

United Utilities is now working as a fully integrated multi-utility reaping the benefits of standardisation with eRespond at the heart of the solution.