A Water Utility Corporation

About This Project

A rural bulk water delivery business that maintains, manages, and operates major infrastructure to deliver bulk water to licensed water users on the state’s regulated rivers, along with associated environmental flows.  They needed to move to integrated systems, improved workflow, better reporting and discover new revenue opportunities.  Their systems were no longer fit-for-purpose.

The Situation

A State Water Utility Corporation was formed quickly.  As it grew its systems were no longer suitable, with no workflow, poor integration, minimal access to data, duplicate data, limited online access for customers, stakeholders and staff, and high costs to add services and functionality.  Meanwhile, it was under increased performance pressure and needed to find additional revenue streams.  It needed to develop its first-ever ICT Strategy and plan a Business Transformation.

The Approach

Information Professionals was engaged as an independent third party to develop their IT Strategy initially. Discussions with ICT staff and with the senior executive members, plus review of existing assets, applications and capabilities informed the strategy.  The ICT Strategy was a short sharp delivery, with main purpose to define the current state and major priorities and set the scene for the Digital Business Transformation Strategy, which followed.

The Business Transformation Strategy defined scope and benefits, costs, staging, schedule, and risks.  It was developed through a series of interviews, workshops, research, and desk work, and ultimately informed the Business Transformation business case.  The business case was developed internally by their staff with our input and support.  The digital transformation scope included ERP (finance, procurement, assets, HR, payroll), customer portal, water management and some river management/SCADA integration capabilities.

In parallel with the development of the Business Transformation Strategy, a series of delivery strategies were developed, including the change management strategy.  The change management started as the IT strategy was completed, with stakeholders mapped and engaged, communications developed and change impacts assessed. The strategic drivers and change management approaches and techniques were defined and enacted.

The Impact

The IT Strategy and Business Transformation strategy was approved as was the subsequent business case.  Information Professionals was further engaged into the Organisational Change work at the program and individual project level.

Roles performed by Information Professionals included Program and project management, architecture, PMO, change management, business analysis, commercial and procurement (go-to-market) and quality assurance.  The program navigated through organisational mergers and many changes of executive and has now successfully concluded.