A regional water utility company

About This Project

A small regional water utility in Victoria sought to transform its operations and customer service, using ICT as an enabler, while keeping prices affordable, and ensuring its long-term business sustainability.

The Situation

The opportunity for the water company to leverage its use of ICT and OT is of critical importance as the water utility company seeks to improve its management of assets, and water and sewerage treatment operations, while maintaining its exceptional customer service standards and keeping prices to customers as low as possible.  It must get the balance right on key strategic challenges and ensure that its long-term business sustainability picture is clear.   An ICT Strategy, Data Strategy and Roadmap were commissioned to guide their ICT and Data priorities over the next 3-5 years, to take forward its ICT capabilities to meet these challenges as part of its upcoming Price Submission for 2023-2028.

The Approach

The approach taken was highly consultative, with open and positive engagement across all areas of the company, leveraging on their strategic direction.  Information was gathered through questionnaires, interviews, workshops, and review of existing documentation, and analysed with SWOT, risk assessment (including cybersecurity), strategic drivers, priority business needs, KPIs and measures.  The primary purposes of the Strategy were identified with benefits and KPIs defined.

Stakeholders were engaged via interviews, workshops and document reviews from the Managing Director down to Subject Matter Experts.  The work defined SWOT, Risks, Strategic priorities across the Balanced scorecard.  A cost optimisation analysis was undertaken and a data management maturity assessment.  An Investment Modelling process was undertake to define benefits that will flow from the strategy, and this guided the strategy into delivery Tranches, which would then support measurability of strategy implementation in future years.

We applied best practice standards including the Gartner Data and Analytics Maturity Assessment, ICT Operating Model standards from Gartner, Investment Logic Mapping, concepts from MSP, PRINCE2, ITIL for ICT management, ISO standards including Risk Management (ISO 31000) and Information Security (ISO 27001/2 and IEC62443), TOGAF, BABoK and DMBoK.

The deliverables have been verified through multiple consultation and feedback processes, with strong engagement across the organisation.  The approach was designed to provide Current State, Future State and an initiative Roadmap encompassing both ICT and Data perspectives, but also providing for the Data Strategy and associated Roadmap initiatives to be managed as a separate deliverable if required.

The Impact

The work provided an accepted path forward for the company, with strong executive support, including an understanding by the executive and key personnel of the implementation challenges that lie ahead.  It has commenced the development of its Price Submission to include the initiatives as set out in the ICT Strategy, Data Strategy and Roadmap, and has commenced implementing a number of recommended initiatives.

The work was collaborative and with that brought a range of insights on key ICT Governance challenges that had faced the organisation in recent times.  This generated depth of understanding and buy in to the new strategy.

Work packages were developed providing project briefs for each strategic initiative, and an input into the upcoming pricing submission.