The organisation specialises in regional infrastructure: ports, electricity distribution and transmission networks, and electricity generation. Similar to other businesses in the energy and utilities industries, they experienced substantial growth from an expanding electricity network in the region and non-network services.

The Challenge

With the growth of the business, they started facing issues around managing data, systems and business processes. Several bespoke and disparate systems throughout the business made reporting difficult with poor data quality. A number of processes relied on manual effort with paper-based processes. With the geographical spread of the group across over five offices in two cities, there was growing concern over how best to manage company information. Inefficiencies with the current environment were exasperated with cost pressures of operating in a heavily regulated industry.

A decision was made to embark on a digital transformation to move as much of the business operations onto digital platforms and a single data model. This comprised of a suite of digital solutions including ERP, GIS and Mobility solutions on a simplified cloud-based architecture. This transformation would modernise practices and systems that supported asset management, finance and procurement, billing and human resources business functions.

Key Outcomes

With Rowan Teh’s support in project governance over their digital transformation, they were able to achieve the following:

1. Consolidated reporting across all business units from a single source of the truth ERP system
2. Digital visualisation of the electricity network using GIS to easily identify and track faults
3. Mobile workforce of field workers and contractors who can manage information on the go using a mobility app
4. Automation of workflows in procure-to-pay and order-to-cash processes
5. A shift towards preventative maintenance to extend the life of assets
6. A complete systems architecture that is cloud-based for future scalability.

Digital transformations present significant risks to businesses. Beyond that of introducing new technology, there are significant impacts to people and business processes. In their case, the transformation impacted people and processes across several business units dispersed across numerous offices and cities. They needed strong capabilities to manage people and process risks and engaged us to deliver the governance support required.

Our Difference

Rowan was the chosen partner for them, offering unique services to provide project governance that:

1. Delivered a robust programme governance approach tailored to the scale of the digital transformation
2. Built strong alignment of stakeholders from their business and the key system integration vendor
3. Proactively mitigated risks and issues based on deep knowledge of the digital solutions
4. Provided strong understanding of the unique aspects of Asset Management and the Utilities industry.

Conclusion

Rowan’s pragmatic approach to project governance not only operated at a project management-level, but help mitigate risks by deep-diving in areas of project delivery to uplift capability where needed.

If you’re looking for a trusted advisor for project governance, with a difference, contact us.