United Utilities Case Study
Support Consolidation, Total Asset Management.............Hugely Reduced Costs!
Customer Profile
United Utilities PLC is a member of the FTSE 100 and employs over 17,000 people.
Its principal activities are managing and operating the regulated electricity distribution, water and wastewater networks in North West England, and a region with a population of around 7 million.
As well as operating utility networks in the North West, the group also owns two support services businesses: United Utilities Contract Solutions and Vertex. These businesses apply the group's core skills of infrastructure management and business process management in the provision of services to others.
Customer Challenge
- Reduce operating expenditure.
- Obtain a view of current infrastructure after a number of years of extensive procurement.
- Obtain single view of existing support contracts and produce a workable support framework for asset management moving forward.
- Multiple contracts with no consistent start and end date.
- Problem with budgeting for future expenditure.
Solution Summary
- WTL performed an audit of existing support contracts and cross referenced existing infrastructure to produce an asset registry at that point in time.
- After analysing the discrepancies between the two sets of data; WTL put forward an option for the consolidation and co-termination of over 50 contracts into eight contracts, segmented into logical areas of infrastructure for future asset management and support level agreements.
Results and Benefits of the Project
- Overall cost savings for three years calculated at £2mn.
- A single asset registry of all IT infrastructure and software.
- Reduction in operating expenditure and transparency for ongoing budgetary purposes.
- Manageable view of contracts in place.
- UU now have the correct level of support required to under-pin exact business requirements.
- Total flexibility to add/remove equipment.
