Business transformation creates an unrivalled customer experience

Our customer is an asset intensive business. Key to their success is how they manage their assets – they need a good understanding of what’s happening both underground and above ground with their pipes, pumps and sewage works. With dated systems, they face issues around understanding the health of their assets and receiving high-quality, accurate data and information.  

Building upon strong historical performance, and in order to continue to maintain high levels of service to customers, they embarked upon a major programme to transform their Asset Management activities. The Intelligent Asset Management Programme sets the foundations for ‘leading asset management’, not just in their sector, but across most utility sectors. But this was bigger than just updating the IT systems.  

The programme is made up of a set of individual projects around the themes of better data and information, better business processes and improved technology. This is all underpinned by having people with the right mind-set and a shared vision of what our customer, as an organisation, is trying to achieve. An external review had identified the importance of developing a Target Operating Model (TOM). This would help them understand the capabilities they required as an organisation and take advantage of the investment in technology; resolve issues that exist in the business; clarify accountabilities and responsibilities; improve customer service and lower operating costs. 

It was clear to the customer that they needed a business transformation and change management partner to help them develop the TOM, supported with change management training to bring the learning into the wider team, creating internal capability should they want to do this again in the future. The Programme Director recommended Project One, following a previous experience of working together.

Project One led the customer’s Executive Leadership Team, Second Line Leadership and Business Transformation Team through a disciplined process, over a three-month period, to reach a facilitated agreement across the business on the Target Operating Model to implement.  

The customer’s Head of Asset Management Transformation said, “It was really important, for myself and my team, to have the right people helping us, and after interviewing a number of different parties, we got a really good feel for working with Project One from the initial discovery day we were very much aligned on what we wanted to achieve. The methodology that Project One brought was the type of process we would be comfortable with and wanted to follow. They were not consultants who knew the answer already and imposed their views – they worked through a process to help us identify where we wanted to be, not where they thought we should be.  The additional governance from Project One’s Consulting Director added great value, providing the right amount of challenge to make sure we were following the right process.”

“Project One’s expertise brought a well-structured change management approach. Things were done in the right order, getting us to the answer we wanted to get to at the end. It was a really good learning process for us. The process drew people into the conversations and made them feel part of the development of what the customer was doing. It challenged their thinking on their vision, values, and the strategies that they had in place, to pinpoint what they were really trying to achieve at an organisational level, before looking at the capabilities that they required to deliver these things.”

“We don’t want this just to be a great customer experience, but also able to deliver a great employee experience. If we make things really easy, and positive for our employees, they will be able to really buy into the vision that we’re trying to deliver and create that unrivalled customer experience that we want.” Programme Sponsor 

The programme overall will help the customer deliver sustained and improved levels of customer service. By having better data and analytics information, and joined-up technology, it means that when someone turns up on the doorstep, they will know the customer’s history before they get there – including any problems they have experienced with the service in the past and what was done to remedy that – delivering an unrivalled customer experience.

As well as these direct customer benefits, our customer will be able to manage their service more efficiently, through better managing their asset base, and avoiding unplanned interruptions to the service and major outages. The new Target Operating Model was developed and signed off by the Executive Leadership Team in 12 weeks. It covered all activity from strategic planning, through to asset delivery and operation, to maintenance and repair (including customer driven activity). 

Project One adding value  

• Exemplary programme management and Change leadership  
• Ability to identify and develop an effective target operating model  
• Innovative approach to building the business case and supporting through the executive sign off process  
• Understanding of systems, data, customer touch points, and the capabilities required to deliver the best customer experience 
• Expertise to challenge current thinking on vision, values, and strategies to deliver the best solution.