The company belongs to one of Brazil’s largest private group of companies. It develops solutions to preserve natural resources and improve people’s quality of life through its operations in the water and sewage, utilities and waste sector.
Key results
4:1
return on investment15%
increase in productivity of field teams15%
reduction in both manpower and fuel cost6%
reduction in fleet cost
The challenge
The company wanted to reduce costs, provide better service and increase productivity without impacting margins to improve competitiveness.
What we did
We worked with the management team to identify and implement process improvements, increase the productivity of field teams, increase service levels and reduce operating costs to preserve its margin. We involved employees in the development and implementation of the solutions. Each proposed management system tool had been designed and developed in collaboration with internal staff to make it fit-for-purpose. The tools and routines that were created, enabled additional control over the processes, which were supported with specific KPI’s, enabled management to make swift decisions based on facts.
Network management
We reorganised the company’s equipment and maintenance management process.We also changed the focus of the execution process from corrective to preventive. This led to a number of benefits including an increase in productivity and improved operational reliability, which contributed to reducing volume losses.
Commercial area – reading and revenue
We developed a productivity management system to better support commercial field agents. This system was designed to improve their overall effectiveness. We also overcame irregularities in its planning targets and tasks by defining standard times and better planning of resources, which improved overall productivity.
Operational support/Contract management
A management model was developed to improve the efficiency and productivity of the operations teams. This was done by ensuring that business guidelines were adhered to by reviewing compliance of the required service levels, as well as the expected productivity stipulated in concessions. The internal and administrative processes were redesigned while activities and work schedules were resized and balanced. We also tightened the control on outsourced services by reviewing the approval criteria for outsourcing to reduce demand and payment.
Results
Some of the benefits obtained from the programme included:
- Weekly automated report generation on productivity and overtime resulted in manpower cost savings of 15%.
- The productivity of field teams improved by 15% following better utilisation, efficiency and team management.
- Fifteen percent reduction in fuel costs and 6% in vehicle fleet costs by optimising dimensioning of vehicles and equipment, displacement control and creation of support.
- Reduced contract cost by 6% for outsourced security services, cleaning and temporary labour by renegotiating the contracts, payment audits and new sheet for control and verification of measurements.
- In the area of compliance with preventive maintenance on electromechanical systems, the client has achieved improvements in utilisation, efficiency and productivity of teams management. These resulted in a 12% increase in productivity of teams, reaching 100% of Preventive Maintenance Compliance for water system and 60% for sewage system.
- Commercial and physical losses was reduced following better planning, dimensioning and balancing of commercial agents and vehicles.
* We take client confidentiality seriously. While we have kept the brand anonymous, the results are real.
