Northumbrian Water Living Water - A Drop of Imagination

f o p o A Dr n o i t a n i g Ima Project Partner

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B U S I N E S S I N T E RV I E W

f o p o r D A n o i t a n i g a Im We talk to Nigel Watson, CIO at Northumbrian Water, about the company’s transformation programmes, its drive for innovation, and the success of its annual Innovation Festival.

Written by Anna McMahon • Produced by Danielle Harris

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When you think about digital transformation, a water company might not immediately spring to mind.

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ut, the changes in customer expectations that have taken place, driven by their experiences of other service providers, means utility companies such as Northumbrian Water have been forced to run their businesses in a similar way. Nigel Watson, CIO at Northumbrian Water, explains, “We work on the principle that if our customers had a choice, they would choose us. We aim to deliver a service like Amazon or John Lewis, for example, therefore it is necessary for us to transform in order to continue to innovate. There are a number of changes including climate, the aging

population and the need to be more efficient that act as external drivers to what we do.”

With 4.5 million customers and £11 billion worth of assets, it was essential for Northumbrian Water to ensure the transformation process would be as smooth as possible. The customer transformation programme, triggered by the need for its archaic technology to be updated, was run as a business transformation programme for this very reason. Nigel said, “The homegrown system we were using could be operated by only a handful of people, and yet it generated around

a m a e d a m “We have n h c e t e g d leading e m a s y s e n e G and

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n i t n e m t s e v ajor in e l c a r O m o r nology f � s r e h t o t s g mon Nigel Watson, CIO at Northumbrian Water 5

n i v a h g n i h t e n o l u s o a c t i “It w f i t u b t , c m e e n n o c syst o t y l t m n o e i t c s u c effi e h t , s r e e c m o n t e r e cus f f i d e h t e c i t no

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genesys.com/uk +44 (0)20 3808 3999

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4.5M customers 90 per cent of our revenue. This was untenable, so a decision was taken, driven by restructuring in the water companies, to make a big investment in modernising architecture, reequipping our workforce, and reskilling the leadership team. This redefined our target operating model and roles within the company. We also invested heavily in emotional intelligence for our customer services team. It was one thing having a sophisticated system, but if it couldn’t be used efficiently to connect with our customers, the customers would not notice the

£11B worth of assets

difference. Emotional intelligence was therefore key to bringing the system to life.”

From a tech perspective, the company adopted an Oracle omnichannel utilities-specific CRM billing system, connecting through to a single platform, to ensure its 2.1 million accounts would be billed accordingly.

It was no mean feat, with the potential to be extremely disruptive. Nigel explains, “We have made a major investment in leading edge technology from Oracle and Genesys amongst

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others. We feel that the Genesys platform will be critical to us, providing a joined-up unrivalled customer experience, as our customers start to utilise lots of different channels to communicate with us.”

For the billing migration, Northumbrian Water conducted billing comparison tests to generate bills within a penny of what they were previously generating. They did nine dress rehearsals in total, adopting the Insights Discovery Tool, which is based on the work of Dr Carl Jung, to connect various components within the programme.

Insights Discovery is built to help people understand themselves, understand others, and make the most of the relationships that affect them in the workplace. Nigel used a set of coloured bricks to identify different colours relating to people’s strengths. For example, reds are risk takers, yellows are creative, greens are people-orientated, and blues

pay attention to detail. The idea was to promote connections with others working on the programme and solve any conflicts by enabling people to see different perspectives, providing methods and tools for effective communication. Nigel added, “Using the Insights Discovery methodology, we looked at who was working where.

The data migration team was largely blue except for one person. We moved that individual into a different team to enable her to flourish.”

Prior to going live with the new system, the company detailed nine different components containing around 20 objective measures that needed to be ‘green’ for the move to be a success. Nigel said, “There was no point migrating if there was a flu epidemic in customer services. The go-live would only take place on the basis that one of the components was not ‘red’. This protected us. We were supposed to go live in January, but three of the criteria were red, so we decided to wait until April, after

a g n i k n i h t n g i s “Taking a de d t a d r a h s k r Water also wo r p s n g i s e d f o s e its seri 10

d n a l r e b m u h t approach, Nor h g u o r h t n o i t a v o driving inn � s k c a h n g i s e d rints and 11

“It’s exciting to anticipate what will come from this year’s festival” Nigel Watson, CIO at Northumbrian Water

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e r g n e e s y d a e r l a “We’ve l c n i , l a v i t s e f t s r i f the r T s s o M g n i t s u b pollution o l e v e d e h t d n a , e g leaka

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f o t u o e m o c s g n i eat th t s r i f ’s d n a l g n E g ludin g n i l k c a t f o s y a w ree, new ” s l l i k s a x e l A f o opment the annual billing in February. It was a great decision, backed by the board.

We have the capabilities now, so it is all about knitting them together to create fantastic customer experiences.

Personalisation is also important – you can talk to the person you spoke to yesterday. We will be continuing to invest in the customer experience.”

Taking a design-thinking approach, Northumberland Water also works hard at driving innovation through its series of design sprints and design hacks. Design sprints, covering everything from ways to redesign the billing experience, improve the diversity of the recruitment process and reduce pollution in the environment, take place at a pace of one per month, with off-site visits.

Nigel explains, “We aim for a diverse crowd, so we recruit different people and have no more than half the room from our company. We inject lightning talks of about 20 minutes by experts on certain topics to encourage participants to think in a different way. On the subject of optimising our mobile workforce, we brought in the fire brigade to talk about how they schedule their team. It is great to have three or four different perspectives on one separate issue.”

As part of Northumberland Water’s focus on innovation, it launched its Innovation Festival last year in a bid to showcase its design thinking. A truly unique event in the context of a summer festival, this year’s event will take 12 societal and environmental

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“We also like to involve other water companies, sharing what we have done in the last year, and inviting them to do the same�

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problems, applying design-thinking techniques to try to solve them over five action-packed days, from 9th to 13th July. Nigel said, “We are thrilled to be hosting this event for the second year in the beautiful natural surroundings of Newcastle Racecourse. Last year, we did six sprints, each in a separate tent in the marquee village. We had around 60 data scientists in a data hack on reducing leakage, armed with 10 years of our data, and we took through two or three of their ideas as projects.

We also like to involve other water companies, sharing what we have done in the last year, and inviting them to do the same. We’ve already seen great things come out of the first festival, including England’s first pollutionbusting Moss Tree, new ways of tackling leakage, and the development of Alexa skills. It’s exciting to anticipate what will come from this year’s festival.”

For further information on this year’s Innovation Festival, visit the website

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Northumbrian Water, Abbey Road Pity Me, Durham DH1 5FJ 0845 604 7468 www.nwl.co.uk 18