Case study

How UST helped an Australian water utility gain control of its processes

Enterprise modernization stalls without process clarity. Here's how one utility organization built the governance foundation its transformation depended on.

OUR CLIENT

Our client is a government-owned utility enterprise in Australia, responsible for the water and infrastructure systems that serve communities across the region. Organizations of this type carry an obligation that commercial enterprises don't: operational failures have consequences not just for the business but for the people and services that depend on reliable infrastructure.

THE CHALLENGE

Legacy systems and inconsistent process governance limited operational visibility and scalability

Modernizing enterprise systems is difficult enough when process governance is mature. This organization was attempting to do it without one.

Existing business process management practices evolved organically rather than by design. Documentation was inconsistent across teams, governance workflows were informal, and ownership of individual processes was unclear. When something needed to change, a billing workflow, a maintenance process, or a finance approval chain, there was no reliable record of how it currently worked, and no structured mechanism for managing the change.

Four specific gaps defined the challenge:

• No BPM governance framework: Without standardized conventions, ownership structures, or approval workflows, process changes were managed inconsistently, and accountability was diffused across the organization.
• Limited ARIS capability: The organization had the platform but lacked the internal proficiency to use it effectively: process mining, modeling, and documentation were underutilized relative to what the tool could deliver.
• No current-state process models for critical functions: Finance, billing, customer management, and maintenance operations across systems, including Ellipse, CAPPS, and Maximo, lacked documented process models at the level of detail needed to support modernization planning.
• Misalignment with enterprise architecture goals: Process management was operating in isolation from the broader enterprise architecture program, creating a risk that modernization investments would be built on an unclear operational foundation.

The consequence was compounding: every week without a functioning process governance model made the modernization program more difficult and more expensive to execute.

THE TRANSFORMATION

Standardized process governance and BPM capabilities using ARIS

UST began with assessment, not implementation. The team mapped the current state of process governance across the organization before any ARIS configuration began. That baseline shaped everything that followed.

Governance came first. UST developed process meta-models, conventions, and BPM standards that gave the organization a consistent language for managing processes across all functions, with defined ownership structures, approval of workflows, and change controls.

With governance established, UST configured ARIS to surface operational bottlenecks through process mining and developed current-state and future-state models at levels 3 and 4 across finance and maintenance operations, including Ellipse, CAPPS, and Maximo, creating the documented foundation the modernization program required.

The final priority was capability transfer. UST worked directly with the Business Improvement team to build the internal proficiency needed to independently manage process documentation, governance, and continuous improvement. Eliminating external dependency was the goal, not extending it.

THE IMPACT

Improved process visibility, governance, and operational scalability

UST enabled the organization to strengthen operational governance and establish scalable BPM capabilities aligned with enterprise modernization priorities.

Key outcomes in detail

• The organization now has documented current-state and future-state process models across finance and maintenance operations, the operational clarity that its modernization program required and previously lacked.
• A formalized BPM governance framework, with defined ownership and approval workflows, replaced ad hoc process management across the enterprise.
• Process mining through ARIS surfaced operational bottlenecks that had been invisible under previous reporting practices.
• Internal teams are now equipped to lead process improvement independently. The business improvement team manages ARIS documentation, governance, and optimization without ongoing external dependency.

What the organization lacked at the start, a process foundation capable of supporting enterprise modernization, it now has. Enterprise modernization demands a process foundation that supports it. If your BPM governance hasn't kept pace with your transformation ambitions, that's where UST starts.

Talk to UST about BPM and process governance.