Water firm consolidates IT systems

Thames Water is set to make larger than expected savings on a project to consolidate and refine conveyancing IT systems.

The utility, which supplies customers in the Thames Valley area, expects to save an extra half a million pounds this year on top of previously predicted savings of £4.4m over five years.

Peter Kaye, Thames Water’s asset data services operations manager, says the flexibility of the business rules system that the company is using has been the driver behind the extra savings.

‘When we started we could see some major areas where we could make efficiencies, and we focused on those,’ he said.

‘Having resolved those we have gone to the next level of detail, and are able to implement processes at a lower level of detail without additional software development costs.’

Thames Water started using the Ilog business rules system last year, as part of a five-year project to consolidate six key applications the company uses for its conveyancing work.

Kaye cites his team’s work on urgent requests as a prime example of the kind of efficiencies generated by taking business processes and using systems to make changes quickly.

Processing logic has also been changed to eliminate manual elements of the expediting process, he says.

‘When someone needs a rapid response when a property comes up for completion our logic speeds those enquiries through the process, which was not part of the initial implementation work,’ said Kaye.

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Water works

• Thames Water says it will save £4.4m over the next five years on conveyancing requests to check drainage and waste.
• Savings will come from refining business process rules on how the 250,000 requests the utility receives annually are handled.