Thames Water is the UK’s largest water and wastewater services company, with 8.5 million water supply customers, and 13.5 million sewerage customers.  With the 2008/9 billing cycle approaching, Thames Water was looking for additional web functionality to take online payments from customers.

When high costs and difficulties meeting the deadline became evident, one of Thames Water’s consultants, Mike Whitecross, suggested they contact IRUN.  The IRUN team met with Thames Water to discuss the requirements: a system of online forms to collect and capture data, and to take online payments.  Thames Water was delighted when IRUN quoted significantly less than other providers, and was able to meet Thames Water’s tight deadlines.

With a project of this size and importance, effective project management is essential.  Thames Water achieved this with its partner Wipro Technologies, which provides the company with project and program management using Prince2 methodology.  Wipro worked with IRUN to ensure project process and outcomes conformed to Thames Water’s requirements and guidelines.

The importance of effective project management quickly became apparent as the project moved through the analysis stage.  As the number of forms and scope of the project evolved, IRUN worked with Thames Water to get to a specification which could be approved.

The central point of the system is the credit/debit card payments page.  Dealing with customers’ account information and their payment details, meant security and integration with existing Thames Water systems was of paramount importance.

The payment gateway specified by Thames Water was Bibit, part of Royal Bank of Scotland.  Interaction between systems proved to be the most difficult technical task.  Credit Card details are collected by website software, and securely transferred to Bibit’s on-line transaction processing system.  As well as complying with the rules and stipulations for handling credit card information, IRUN developed a system which could reliably complete the transactions.  Support from Bibit was good, so the development was completed successfully, and the system went live, as planned, in February 2008.

With the initial phase of the project delivered, and online payments system totalling £1m in the first month, Thames Water moved on to its planned redesign of its main website.  To achieve consistency between the main website and the IRUN-delivered payments area, Thames Water asked IRUN to redesign the payment area.  To ensure future changes in the main Thames Water website would be reflected in the payments area, IRUN designed a system which picks up the structure template from the main Thames Water site.  This is populated with everything needed for the payments area, without the need for expensive re-programming every time the main website is changed.  This second phase went live over the summer of 2008.

Thames Water has commissioned IRUN to deliver a second update to the payments system.  This is related to the collection and storage of customer information.  The original specification had called for the transfer and storage of all sensitive data into Thames Water’s own internal systems.  An internal change at Thames Water had resulted in an interim solution which was not fully automated, and did not provide the reports it needed.  With the new work carried out by IRUN, Thames Water will get the reports they need, and the security of customer data is enhanced.  This has been achieved by ‘splitting’ the server and leaving the customer-facing part in the DMZ (demilitarised zone), communicating with a one-way XML (extended mark-up language) data transfer to the other ‘part’ of the server.

Throughout, IRUN has worked in partnership with both Thames Water, and the project management team at Wipro.  The relationships have been fruitful and very effective in delivering the three projects commissioned to date.  During critical phases of the project, daily on-line meetings have kept everyone informed and on-track.

Feedback from Thames Water staff about the payments website and processing has been very positive.  IRUN provides training on a regular basis, helping new Thames Water staff learn to use the payments system.