Anglian Water
Overview:
Anglian Water Services Ltd is part of the AWG group of companies and is one of the leading providers of water and wastewater services in the UK. Located in the east of England, Anglian Water serves the needs of over five million industrial, commercial and domestic customers in the region. Anglian Water is one of the geographically largest water companies in the UK with annual revenues exceeding £720 million.
Business need:
Driven by the business need to increase cost efficiencies and reduce risk, Anglian Water made the strategic decision in 1995 to outsource the company’s IT infrastructure, systems
and applications directly to CSC (Computer Sciences Corporation). As specialists in the provision of applications development and management, Salmon Limited was sub-contracted to Anglian Water via CSC.
Solution:
Services provided by Salmon as part of the CSC outsourcing contract have included support, bespoke development and system migration.
Benefits:
With over 11 year’s experience of working with Anglian Water, the latter 8 of which have been in collaboration with CSC, Salmon’s commitment to Anglian Water is based upon providing professional people with proven experience, the right approach and the ability to
solve problems quickly and in a manner that is directly aligned to both
business and user needs.
Through tightly managed, collaborative business relationships, Salmon, CSC and Anglian Water have driven savings across a range of services including a 32% reduction in underlying infrastructure and application costs from £22 million to £15 million per annum. Such tangible savings are derived as a direct result of commitments from all parties
to understand business needs and the technology solutions required to meet these needs.
Full Case Study:
Anglian Water Services Ltd is part of the AWG group ofcompanies and is one of the leading providers of water and wastewater services in the UK. Located in the east of England, Anglian Water serves the needs of over five million industrial, commercial and domestic customers in theregion. Anglian Water is one of the geographically largest water companies in the UK with annual revenues exceeding £720 million.
Outsourcing IT Management to Business Partners
Driven by the business need to increase cost efficiencies and reduce risk, Anglian Water made the strategic decision in 1995 to outsource the company’s IT infrastructure, systems and applications directly to CSC (Computer Sciences Corporation). As specialists in the provision of applications development and management, Salmon Limited was sub-contracted to Anglian Water via CSC. This case study considers how these business relationships were established and the benefits they have brought to Anglian Water’s IT Management since 1995.
The Transition to an Outsourced Business Model
For the 3-year period 1992 – 1995, Salmon held a direct business relationship with Anglian Water supplying resources on a fixed price contractual basis focused upon the company’s billing system. This system is used to maintain customer data, issue customer bills, help resolve customer queries, collect revenues and effectively manage bill payments and settlements.
As part of the drive to increase efficiency and reduce costs, Anglian Water signed a £200 million contract with CSC in 1995 for the provision of outsourcing, systems integration and consulting services over a 10-year period. As a result CSC has been responsible for the majority of Anglian Water's IT requirements.
CSC recognised the value of Salmon’s knowledge and experience of Anglian Water’s billing systems and previous work relating to RIMS (Regional Income Management System). The billing system formed a vital part of the company’s overall business. Upon the completion of a successful ‘proof of concept’ project, it became clear that further cost and risk reductions could be made by working in partnership with Salmon to migrate the existing billing systembased on a Bull mainframe using PacBase to a thin client, client/server architecture.
Anglian Water, CSC and Salmon have worked hard over the last 8 years to ensure open, transparent relationships exist between all parties. In this way, Salmon has played a major role in helping Anglian Water to streamline services and introduce new applications to support the company’s existing business and exploit new opportunities across regulated andnon-regulated operations.
Services Provided Over 11 Years
Services provided by Salmon as part of the CSC outsourcing contract have included support, bespoke development and system migration.
Support Services
Salmon is contracted with CSC to provide 24x7x365 outsourced application support services to Anglian Water. Recognising the importance of service standards and continuity, Salmon continues to provide mutual benefits to both CSC and Anglian Water.
By providing continuity in terms of both people and service levels, Salmon has removed many of the risks associated with using independent contractors. Both CSC and Anglian Water gain confidence from the fact that any enhancements or developments to the billing system are covered by comprehensive support services provided by a long-term supplier.
Bespoke Development & System Enhancement
Developments to the billing system are predominantly driven by cost reduction and wherever possible, manual processes are removed in order to mitigate risk and maximise efficiency.
Particular attention has been given to developing interfaces to key applications including payment and settlement; providing customers with a range of methods through which to pay and settle their water bills. The latest payment method introduced in April ’02 enables customers to settle their bills free of charge at any Post Office using a secure card system - Paypoint - that automatically registers every payment made.
On behalf of CSC, Salmon maintains direct contact with 3rd party systems including National Giro, Bank Giro and Paypoint to ensure any interface issues are resolved as quickly as possible.
The billing system also integrates with the company’s call centre operations based in Lincoln, Spalding and Huntingdon. As an inbound and outbound operation, the call centre is avital function in dealing with customers’ billing queries, payment checking and debt recovery. The billing system links directly to the company’s main customer database and now allows Anglian Water to more proactively and efficiently manage bill issuing, payments and settlements.
Migration
In the late ‘90s the decision was made to migrate the company’s billing system from Bull mainframes to a full client/server architecture based on a Unix platform with an Oracle RDBMS (Relational Database Management System).
In so doing, the application would be transferred to CSC’s Data Centre based in Maidstone from its original location in Huntingdon. This decision was based upon the need to retire legacy systems and to introduce a more integrated product that could be easily adapted to new or changed functionality. This was coupled with the need to reduce the overall costs of managing and maintaining the system. The project called for an intimate knowledge of the system and solid project management skills in order to ensure a smooth transition.
With more than 8 years’ experience of the existing system, Salmon was heavily involved in ensuring the migration succeeded with minimum disruption to day-to-day business activities and system performance. As part of a £19 million project, Salmon focused heavily on system and database design, data migration, application code and scripts conversion for the new billing system.
The project was successfully completed in October ’00 on time and within budget.
System Performance & Optimisation
Salmon is continuously determining ways in which to improve system performance by delivering additional functionality to the existing system as well as providing ongoing support, which in turn, is fed back into the system optimisation process.
Salmon, CSC and Anglian Water – A Collaborative Approach
Salmon approaches the provision of technology services with a strong emphasis on 4 critical factors:
- Risk mitigation
- Cost control
- Project timescales
- User expectations
Coupling these factors with Salmon’s knowledge of Anglian Water’s business and IT systems, has enabled Salmon to provide Anglian Water, through CSC, with a fast-track towards data migration and process re-design. By taking a sub-set of the system to build, test and execute a proof of concept before a project is conducted in real-time, places all parties in a far stronger position to identify and understand the risks and issues associated with the execution of the project. This approach also gives rise to more accurate cost and time estimates and therefore leads to a larger proportion of projects being completed on time and within allocated budgets.
This approach proved particularly beneficial to the company’s recent database migration to Oracle 8. Anglian Water needed to be confident that the existing system performance would not be impaired by such an upgrade. The company relies on both CSC and Salmon to provide recommendations on technology migrations in terms of both suitability and benefits to be realised by the business.
Predominantly CSC work directly with Anglian Water on managing the business aspects relating to the outsource agreement including identifying improvements to existing business processes and systems needed to support these processes. Once agreed, CSC then work with the Salmon team to determine the best route forward for implementing such changes at a technical level pertaining to the current billing system. As part of this process, Salmon maintains direct contact with relevant Anglian Water personnel and work alongside users, particularly in the call centre operation, to ensure that all aspects are fully understood from the users’ perspective prior to implementation.
CSC benefits from working with Salmon in this way by maintaining a single point of contact through a single supplier for contractual work. This negates the need for CSC to manage multiple independent contractors and therefore gives rise to business efficiencies in terms of both management time and cost.
Summary
With over 11 year’s experience of working with Anglian Water, the latter 8 of which have been in collaboration with CSC, Salmon’s commitment to Anglian Water is based upon providing professional people with proven experience, the right approach and the ability to solve problems quickly and in a manner that is directly aligned to both business and user needs.
Through tightly managed, collaborative business relationships, Salmon, CSC and Anglian Water have driven savings across a range of services including a 32% reduction in underlying infrastructure and application costs from £22 million to £15 million per annum. Such tangible savings are derived as a direct result of commitments from all parties to understand business needs and the technology solutions required to meet these needs.
"Salmon worked above and beyond what would normally be expected of a contractor in finding solutions to problems. Due to their in-depth understanding of both Anglian Water’s business and their familiarity with the billing system, CSC was placed in the strongest possible position to deliver against its client’s needs."
Peter Webster, Account Delivery Manager, Computer Sciences Corporation
"The new billing system has exceeded our expectations providing Anglian Water with the fastest throughput of the largest number of bills in our history. This can be directly accredited to the detailed system and database design work carried out prior to implementation. Any concerns we had ahead of this project have proved to be unfounded."
Paul Saunders, Head of Information Services, Anglian Water.
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