Yorkshire Water has announced another multi-million pound investment, which the company hopes will increase innovation, improve efficiency and keep customers’ bills “as low as possible”.
The company plans to invest £50 million in IT over the next four to seven years and has brought in eight new partners under a “flexible framework”.
The framework, which will be broken down into two sections – advisory and delivery of IT services -will cover 12 key areas including application management, infrastructure and new projects.
Yorkshire Water said the new structure will allow it to “deliver a better service” for customers at a lower cost and improve innovation through “increased levels of competition and collaboration” among suppliers.
Jo Robinson, IT vendor manager, said: “This is an exciting investment which will allow us to build on the existing IT infrastructure. It has been created to increase our capacity, flexibility and capability to deliver IT services.
“We chose our partners based on capabilities, but also their ethics and culture to ensure they would fit in with what we want to achieve.”
Hexaware, Sopra-Steria, DXC, Capgemini, PA Consulting, Infosys, Italik and Wipro have all won contracts with Yorkshire Water and will start working with the company on 1 April.
Industry manager at DXC Technology, Paul Pimlott, said: “We look forward to working in partnership with Yorkshire Water, bringing innovation and digital technologies in support of Yorkshire Water’s delivery of water and waste water services in a safe and efficient way.”
Robinson added: “We are looking forward to see what the new partners can bring and help us deliver a better service for customers at a lower cost.”
Last month, Yorkshire Water announced it is looking to drive innovation with the appointment of Stantec (previously MWH) as its sole strategic planning partner (SPP) in a deal worth £50 million.
While earlier this month it revealed plans to release the “majority” of its operational and service data by 2020 in a bid to increase transparency.