- Energy, Resources, and Utilities
- Case Study
NWC taps TCS to integrate Saudi water supply system
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MINS READ
Industry
- Energy, Resources & Utilities
Rebalance the energy equation
Solutions
- Enterprise Solutions
Accelerate Enterprise Digital Transformation for Sustainable Change
Highlights
- NWC partnered with TCS to integrate its four units serving Saudi’s four major cities with the 13 water ministry directorates serving the rest of the Kingdom.
- It wanted a comprehensive digital solution to integrate the legacy-based backend systems, fix supply chain issues, and align fragmented HR policies.
- TCS helped NWC execute the successful transformation project with substantial business benefits.
Overview
The National Water Company (NWC), a Saudi joint stock company wholly owned by the government, was established in 2008 to provide water and wastewater treatment services in four major cities of Saudi Arabia—Riyadh, Jeddah, Makkah, and Taif. The rest of the kingdom was serviced by 13 directorates reporting directly to the ministry of water and agriculture. This was sought to be consolidated and NWC was given the transformational task of integrating all the directorates and the four city-based units into six clusters for all matters functional, legal, and administrative, all within a short span of 18 months. A large-scale program called One-NWC was launched.
Challenges
NWC formed a strategic transformation partnership with TCS to roll out ERP across all clusters, seeking a digital solution to address the following challenges:
- Move from a cash-based accounting system to an accrual-based one to meet the International Finance Reporting Standard compliance norms
- Fix NWC’s disjointed back-end business processes with its associated challenges • Streamline disjointed supply chain systems, which led to challenges in inventory management and procurement processes
- Align fragmented HR policies and practices to homogenize HR functioning across the distribution sector
- Cleanse and upgrade NWC data quality for effective business decision-making
- Provide multi-lingual access in the NWC ERP systems for all employees
- Facilitate user acceptance training for critical users and end users in 13 locations nationwide, and also stepping up to the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic
Solution
TCS evaluated ERP platform’s standard functionalities and best practices and designed and implemented a comprehensive solution suite to meet NWC’s requirements. TCS followed a theme-based agile business transformation roadmap in two phases—the first to standardize the core systems and the second to integrate the clusters. Among the critical solutions were:
- Fixing 132 gaps in the ERP system related to processes and IFRS, and integration within a compressed period of six months to build the baseline as part of phase 1, which could then serve as model for roll-out to all clusters as a part of phase 2
- A unified Oracle EBS solution for all business functions and migrating legacy application data into the Oracle system
- Migrating 45 entities to enable a seamless transition from the ministry’s ERP and associated back-end processes to an enterprise-grade ERP-driven, homogenized NWC proces
Enhanced reporting capabilities meant greater control and traceability. NWC could now lower maintenance costs, shrink technical gaps, and augment effectiveness and efficiency by automating business processes.
Benefits
With TCS as partner, NWC executed a successful transformation project with substantial business benefits.
TCS completed the cluster integration in 18 months, within the strict timeline of the One-NWC program. The tight integration of payments with finance reconciliation led to accurate reporting and enhanced HR data analysis. Enhanced reporting capabilities meant greater control and traceability. NWC could now lower maintenance costs, shrink technical gaps, and augment effectiveness and efficiency by automating business processes. Empirically, some of the stand-out gains achieved, though not exhaustive, were:
42% increase in supplier work completions per month
50% reduction in supply chain management and HR non-desirable customizations in nine months
Cycle time reduction in onboarding a supplier from five days to less than 24 hours
Cycle time for updating supplier details reduced from 48 hours to less than 15 minutes
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