Case study

United Utilities

Assuring successful delivery of a business-critical customer billing programme

United Utilities (UU) is one of the UK's leading utility infrastructure and business process outsourcing companies, with a turnover of almost £2 billion. Its water business serves around 3 million customers in the North West of England.

UU needed to implement a new customer-centric billing system for the water business, the UU Customer Billing Programme (CBP), in order to achieve improved cost-effectiveness and to support future change in the UU Group for customer contact and billing services. The program involved a large team from a variety of organizations, led by a UU Programme Director. The program contained a number of complexities and associated risks. In addition, it was set against the backdrop of failed customer billing programs in the utilities industry.

Given these complexities, and as part of UU's approach to reducing the inherent risk, PA was asked to provide independent external assurance.

"PA's role as Independent Programme Assurance added real value to the CBP Programme. PA brought the right experience at the right levels and was sensitive in managing stakeholders. PA acted as the program's conscience and helped us to ensure that this challenging program was delivering successfully."

Andy Barnes, Director, Group IS Strategy and Assurance, United Utilities