Utilities Case Study

Electricity Distribution Network Operator

THE ORGANISATION

The Connections business within a major electricity Distribution Network Operator (DNO) covering enquiry management, design, quotation and delivery functions.

THE ISSUES / PROBLEMS

• The business was geographically dispersed with 30 discreet teams operating out of 7 separate locations.
• All customers were treated in the same way, from small domestic upgrades to multi-million £ industrial and commercial development projects.
• Business processes were complex, non-standard and time consuming, with poor visibility and management of workloads and resources. Communication throughout the major functions was poor and there had recently been a major failure against regulatory service standards.

PROJECT ACTIVITIES

• A series of one-to-one interviews with senior managers, including the CEO, to develop alignment of vision, thinking and purpose.
• A rapid analysis of customers was undertaken to establish volumes and values of business, services requested and conversion ratios.
• Rapid process mapping was undertaken covering all locations and a highly complex set of 'service' offerings.
• A 'stand-alone' performance management data-base was interrogated to uncover existing location, team and individual performance. This formed the basis of strengthened expectation setting and performance management based on 'best-of-best' achievements.
• Business processes were re-engineered to include: specific relationship management processes for differing customer segments, re-defined commercial boundaries for quotations; improved 'front-end' filtering to separate speculative enquiries from firm quotations; automated quotations via web-sites; improved information management and communications throughout the entire connections value-chain
• Re-defined an improved organisation structure

PROJECT RESULTS

• Vastly improved relationship management and service across all customer groupings
• Improved, consistent business processes, together with improved performance management resulted in significant re-allocation of resources to additional work, and an overall net release of 14% of existing capacity
• All statutory regulator targets were subsequently met.