Bournemouth and West Hampshire Water

Bournemouth and West Hampshire Water (BWHW) is a company that supplies drinking water to households and businesses in an area covering 1,000 square kilometers in the South of England. The company is one of the leading performers in the UK Water Industry. BWHW supplies on average about 150 million litres of drinking water every day, through nearly 3000 kilometres of water mains. Demand increases significantly during warm dry summer weather as a result of garden watering and the influx of visitors to the area. Challenge BWHW is not only a complex business but one that is heavily regulated through HM Government Agency OFWAT and as a result, requires the need for agility and continuous process evolution and development. Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is central to the company's performance both in the delivery of its products and its client relationship management to maintain a competitive advantage. There is a legacy infrastructure in the business that works. There was a need to develop new applications and processes and it was decided that an Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) solution was needed. The ICT team at BWHW are forward thinking and understood that the demand for increasingly complex and higher level Management Information Services was only going to increase over time. In addition there was a need to deliver new services and process to the business in ever shorter timeframes. Their legacy solutions, both hardware and software, were performing well, yet there was an underlying concern about delivering new processes and information without substantial investment in some form of EAI. The ambition was to provide users with a seamless interface to all the numerous 'back end' systems with a single sign-on that would deliver services across the business. Solution Initially BWHW identified IBM WebSphere Express as the solution it needed; however, after a substantial period of time without significant progress they started to look at alternatives, hoping to find a solution that may not require a myriad of individual connectors to be written for every application. There was a significant cost to each connector being built and the time required was making the development of solutions a less than agile process. BWHW team invited Datadialogs to undertake a 5-day, proof-of-concept on site. Datadialogs arrived and was given the necessary permissions for Eden to access the 'back office" applications as well as a list of ten new processes and applications to create. "Datadialogs left the site after just two days with all (10) challenges completed and working. These were tasks we had spent the last six months trying unsuccessfully to execute with IBM WebSphere. We bought Eden there and then." Andy Shorey, ICT Manager at BWHW. The proof-of-concept convinced BWHW to invest in Eden and to abandon IBM WebSphere for the purposes of EAI and rich internet application development. "We regard Eden as our 'agile rapid development environment' that affords us the ability to create EAI models without writing any code. Eden provides us with the ability to use its rules and logic engine to build new process models, and to layer these to create new applications in much shorter timeframes." Andy Shorey, ICT Manager at BWHW. Eden works in their environment where there is IBM iSeries (AS/400) running a JBA System 21 ERP system and RPG development environments, as well as using IBM Lotus databases and increasingly working with Microsoft .NET solutions as well. Some examples of the bespoke projects that the BWHW team have used Eden for: Compliance driven project to meet the requirements of The Traffic Management Act - where several disparate sources of information needed to be accessed, manipulated, represented and distributed. "This would have been really difficult and long-winded project to specify," says Andy, "so we set aside some time each day for two of us to get together and to build the solution in Eden. It was live and working in 4 man weeks. We know of other regulated companies who are not compliant as they used the traditional specify, architect and develop route. BWHW was the first to respond and deliver using Eden." A second project was to automate mobile communications and solutions - such that various tables could be updated in real time - no re-keying of data or having to map tables from one system on to another. BWHW is able to update mobile workers' PDAs in real time as a result. The project sources data, reformats the data and validates and then updates other parts of the system - this has driven efficiencies and productivity gains across the business. The third project was very significant as there was a requirement for a single user interface for billing services. Eden has been used to build the process model and to integrate several disparate sources and tables through a single interface. Result Eden is a core part of the ICT team's kit-bag. It has delivered a significant ROI in a very short period of time. The concept of Eden is very much seen as the way forward for ICT projects in BWHW. The evolution of the business and its' ICT infrastructure is complex; using Eden has simplified the process of delivering new services. BWHW has to deliver new services that comply with the requirements of Government and OFWAT; there is a drive to enable customers to interact with all aspects of the business online; this self-service initiative leads to heavy demands for single user interfaces with a single sign on and all the various legacy and new applications being available and up-datable in real time, yet invisibly. Eden has proven to be the agile EAI and rapid application solution that delivers. "Eden has proven itself - it is at the cutting edge of this technology type; the ICT team at BWHW is comfortable that, with the continued pro-active development and support of the Datadialogs team, Eden will continue to be the source of many new initiatives that underpin the future development of our services," concluded Andy Shorey. About Bournemouth and West Hampshire Water Bournemouth Water (established 1863) and West Hampshire Water (established 1893) were two former statutory water companies established by Act of Parliament. The Bournemouth Company also supplied gas until Nationalisation of the Gas Industry in 1949. With the opportunities presented by privatisation of the former Water Authorities in 1989 the two companies came under a joint majority shareholding, through Biwater the British Multi National Water Engineering Group.A common Board of Directors and Management Team was established in 1990, in preparation for amalgamation of the two companies under a Memorandum of Understanding with Ofwat the Industry's Economic Regulator. In preparation for this, the companies converted to Plc status from statutory companies in 1992. This enabled them to adopt a memorandum and articles of association under the Companies Acts, thereby allowing them to uncap dividends and to diversify outside the core water supply business. The companies merged into a new Company through Schemes of Arrangement under the Water Industry Act 1991, on 1 July 1994 as Bournemouth & West Hampshire Water Plc. This new Company was not listed and the former companies de-listed in May 1994 as they no longer met the listing criteria of 25% of their equity being in "public" hands. In order to expand and grow in the context of tightening economic regulation of its water business, the Company has sought opportunities in unregulated enterprise activities. The Company intends to develop a portfolio of enterprise businesses, which draw upon the skills and assets of the regulated business. These can include technical and commercial skills (such as asset management and maintenance) or softer assets like our customer-base which can be exploited with sales of complementary products. In the latter case the Company has developed AquaCare - a domestic plumbing, heating, home emergency insurance and water hygiene business which has grown to nearly £5 million in profitable sales from scratch in just over eight years. On 1 February 2007 the Company acquired Pre-Heat Limited. Based in Poole, Pre-Heat provide gas installation and maintenance services to the social housing sector. With £5 million turnover this effectively doubles the size of AquaCare and creates synergistic opportunities for growth. The Company also has interests in the Graphics Field in design, typesetting and print management serving both internal and external customers. The Royalty moorings and fisheries business stemming from our riparian ownerships in Christchurch Harbour and the Rivers Avon and Stour also provides valuable enterprise income. New recreational opportunities will be exploited from our Longham Lakes Scheme. On 1 April 2000 the Company became the principle component of a 50/50 joint venture (JV) partnership between Biwater and the Dutch multi-utility company, Nuon. The JV company "Cascal" developed investment opportunities in the $200 billion per year global market for private sector participation in the water and wastewater sectors. In August 2005, Biwater and Nuon reached agreement on the sale of Nuon's 50% interest in Cascal. The transaction was subject to approval from the relevant authorities. This sale was in line with Nuon's strategy of concentrating on energy activities in the core countries of the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany. The sale was completed in June 2006 and from that date Cascal became 100% owned by Biwater. In December 2006 Cascal purchased China Water gaining its first foothold in the rapidly developing Chinese market adding to its investments in the UK, Chile, Indonesia, South Africa, the Philippines and Panama which serve over three million people. In January 2008 Cascal undertook an Initial Public Offering (IPO) of its common stock and became listed on the New York Stock Exchange with an enterprise value of $600 million. Its shares commenced trading on 25 January 2008. Biwater retains a 58% interest in Cascal NV, Cascal's Dutch registered holding company. Bournemouth and West Hampshire Water's asset management and operations expertise continues to be applied on the global stage in support of Cascal's growth plans. Bournemouth & West Hampshire Water George Jessel House Francis Avenue Bournemouth Dorset BH11 8N Reference www.bwhwater.co.uk

Company Bournemouth and West Hampshire Water Website www.bwhwater.co.uk Industry Water Authority Solution Eden Enterprise Edition Results: 1. Delivered new customer service process and accountability. 2. Eliminated process inefficiencies through systems integration leading to CRM single-view. 3. Extended life of legacy 'customer service records system' with enhanced new functionality. 4. Empowered 'business' to identify and tackle integration to save costs and improve efficiency. "...we set aside some time each day for two of us to get together and to build the solution in Eden. It was live and working in 4 man weeks. We know of other regulated companies who are not compliant as they used the traditional specify, architect and develop route. BWHW was the first to respond and deliver using Eden."