Improved Competitiveness in Utilities

The Challenge

The client training department appointed Leading Edge Associates to deliver in-house Lean Green Belt certification training for over 60 staff. Influenced by developments in regulation, competition, government policy, market and customer expectations, the landscape in which the company operated was changing rapidly and it needed to make changes to its practices to reflect this. Competition had recently been introduced to the marketplace, so they needed to adjust their practices accordingly.

The Solution

We used Lean to meet the client’s strategic and operational objectives and worked closely with staff to bring the organization forward to fit the newly liberalised market.

The Results

The Green Belt cost was recovered in the first three months of the program and over $900k savings were delivered by the participants.

Lean Green Belt project savings already achieved include:

A 50% reduction in the number of touch points involved in the quotation process
An 85% reduction in the number of commercial quotes outside of service level agreements
A 90% reduction in the number of customer complaints relating to quotations
More than 50% reduction in turnaround time for contact centre emails
No delays in issuing of customer invoices
A substantial increase of 1st time fixes for appliance servicing
A 20-30% decrease in time spent writing non-value-add weekly, monthly and quarterly reports
A significant decrease in misdirected calls as part of an overall streamlining of call centre traffic management