Cracking the ‘Business Process Outsourcing’ Code Main.pptx
The Invisible Water Corporation
1. The Invisible Water Corporation
Peter Prevos
PhD Candidate, School of Business
Manager Land Development, Coliban Water
2. Value Proposition
VicWater (2011)
Strategic Vision for
Water Management
“The 'value proposition'...
needs to be defined and
communicated to
customers”
Water corporations often communicate
the value proposition through
technological achievements.
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3. Benchmarking of Water Services
ESC proposed
performance indicators
Random selection of
targets
What is perfection?
Research into water
service quality
Invisible Water Corporation
SERVAQUA
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4. Service Quality
Value
Perceived benefits
minus perceived cost
Quality
Meeting specifications
Satisfaction
Comparison with
expectations Complaining about high water bill.
Source: neptunetg.com
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5. Consumer Benefits
Needs
Physiological
Sociological
Psychological
Wants
Raw water Gardening is an activity that covers all
types of needs – from physiological
Potable water (movement, food) to providing a sense of
self actualisation.
Recycled water
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6. Consumer Cost
Monetary
Psychological
Sociological
Time
Women in Ethiopia carry water from a lake back
to their homes. The time spent hauling water
can be significant in areas where sources of
domestic water supply are limited. Source:
waterencyclopedia.com
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7. Marginal Utility
Perceived value is
determined by
marginal utility
Least important value
to a consumer
Water
Life sustaining
Waste transportation The marginal utility for water is low
because its lowest utility is flushing it
down the toilet.
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8. Consumer Involvement
Water and sanitation
are considered low
involvement services
Increases as
perceived level of
certainty of supply
decreases
No empirical
validation of this During the drought, many customers
claim spent large amounts of time and money
to retain the ability to use water.
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9. Water & Sanitation Services
Core services
Facilitating services
Needed for service
delivery (grey)
Enhancing services
Extra value (white)
Focus on core
services
Lovelock’s Rose of Service applied to
water corporations.
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10. Customer Satisfaction
Overall Satisfaction
Overall valuation of
the service portfolio
Moment of Truth
Interaction with
service provider
Expectations of
outcome Every time a customer opens a tap,
flushes a toilet or contacts the water
Satisfaction, neutral corporation constitutes a moment of truth.
or dissatisfaction
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11. Overall Satisfaction
The sum of
transaction specific
satisfaction
Other influences
Public image
Trust in corporation The drought and subsequent restrictions
have a large impact on overall customer
Existing models satisfaction.
SERVQUAL
SERVPERF
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12. Transaction Specific Satisfaction
Core Services
Network reliability
Water quality
Facilitating services
Minimise phone calls
Easy to understand
Burst in Kangaroo Flat. Water supply
bills disruptions cost customers additional time.
bendigoadvertiser.com.au
Self serving website
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13. The Invisible Water Corporation
Minimise consumer
time investment
Service quality ideal
No water disruptions
No water restrictions
No boiled water
notice A boiled water notice is a service failure
as it requires consumer more time to use
water.
No phone calls
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14. Further Research
SERVAQUA
Model for water and
sanitation service
quality
Time utility
Consumer perspective
Pilot study
Validate model
www.prevos.net/water
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The ESC recently proposed a new range of performance indicators for water businesses.The UK regulator OFWAT has similar measures to A review of these proposed targets shows that there is no inherent logic as a foundation for the targets.Regulators periodically raise the bar, but what is a perfect water corporation from the consumer’s perspective?Invisible water corporation is a hypothesis on perfection in water services, used to benchmark water corporations in my research.Currently only in conceptual form – preparing a pilot study to validate the methodology.