Challenge
Part of Scottish Water's vision is to keep services affordable by innovating and delivering the best possible value to customers. Scotland was the first country in the world to introduce competition in the water industry, offering choice of water suppliers to non-household customers.
Every supply, premises, and customer starts with an address. It’s the foundation for excellent customer service and management of service data. Accurate customer addresses make it possible to provide customers with the services they need and importantly ensure their charges are correct.
But getting quality addressing data has historically been a challenge.
Changes to a property such as a building splitting into multiple apartments or mergers of properties into one entity are important for Scottish Water to consider. Frequency of change in commercial premises tends to be far higher than in residential premises.
Invoicing and billing are also affected when there are changes to a customer premises, and that can impact customers, Licensed Providers charges, and Scottish Water's revenue.
Solution
AddressBase Premium from Ordnance Survey has given Scottish Water the ability to combine address data from different sources. The core component of AddressBase Premium data is the Unique Property Reference Number (UPRN).
The UPRN is the thread that brings everything together. A master source of address information has been collated into a central hub that Scottish Water, their partners, and agencies, can use to seamlessly manage the lifecycle of an address.
Result
It’s now easier to ensure address and customer information is correct and up to date. Customer service, billing, and invoicing is more efficient and ensures everyone is paying for the services they’re consuming.
Proactive address and premises lifecycle management creates efficiencies in service provision, as well as reducing errors and inbound demand from customers.
"Premises and address data is the cornerstone of how we connect, provide, and manage services to our customers. It helps ensure accurate billing and maintenance of those services, support field engineers, and is crucial in the management and recovery of incidents. Accurate and well-maintained location data has enabled us to take a proactive approach to identifying service changes, and is a key enabler in delivering excellent customer service."
