Measure what matters
Written by Kathy Burroughes (Together Article - SA Water)
Working with our teams on a shared university project while completing her Masters in Information Technology left such a positive impression with Alison Do that she later applied for several roles with our business. She was accepted into an IT Graduate position in April 2019 and hasn’t looked back.
“I was attracted to the positive culture and the friendly people,” Alison says.
Despite her parents’ desire for her to take over the family business in Vietnam, Alison was keen to spread her wings and return to Adelaide once she completed her degree.
“I really loved Adelaide and wanted to return here to work following my studies.
“After visiting several times my parents now love it too.”
Rotating across several technology teams as a Graduate, Alison took on a key role as Adelaide Service Delivery Project Coordinator, a role she describes as ‘amazing’, and later worked for 6-8 months in the Management Systems team supporting our Business Management System and SAAM.
Today, as Business Improvement Specialist in our Excellence, Performance and Change team, Alison has shifted her focus to improving how we use data in the business, and in particular our key performance indicators or KPIs as a measure of our strategy.
“I like working with data and have been contributing my skills in this area to the KPI clarity project,” she says.
Each month, KPI reporting for our Executive team is compiled and loaded into a dashboard for sharing with our Board. For several months, Alison has been working with 90 plus data providers and teams across the business to identify redundant performance indicators.
“We found several KPI’s we were gathering were no longer relevant for Executive reporting.
“We need data to back up our achievements and found that a lot of our measures were not measurable.” As a result, between 30-50 per cent of our existing KPIs - more than 50 performance measures - have since been removed, leading to a saving of 1-2 hours per data provider involved in monthly executive reporting - roughly equating to 100 hours each month.
The next step for Alison is to further automate the process of data gathering and reporting, working closely with the business unit leadership teams alongside the change team to ensure a self-sustaining improvement.
“I plan on developing a KPI governance framework to ensure every individual is clear on the measures they are contributing towards achievement of our strategy and measure what is critical. Our aim is to have data that demonstrates how we are tracking towards delivering our strategy, confirms our successes and identifies where we need to further focus our efforts and resources,” Alison says.
Alison says communication has been key to identifying problems and the success of this project to date.
“We meet with different teams and listen to their concerns and show how our team can help with the skills and frameworks we have put in place," Alison says.
Outside of work, Alison volunteers for Toastmasters, which aims to promote public speaking and develop confident communicators.
"When I came to Australia five years ago from Vietnam my English-speaking skills were not strong.
“In Vietnam, the focus is on listening and reading in English, not speaking skills, so this was an area I wanted to improve.
“I like being constantly challenged. When I am in my comfort zone I am not learning.”
In the past few years, she’s been a finalist in the AWA Young Water Professionals awards and WSAA Young Utility Leaders program, and a nominee in the 7News Young Achiever Award 2022.
Keen to share her knowledge, she also volunteers to help international students with their career development, as well as contributing to GovHack.
In the little free time she has left, Alison grounds herself spending time in her garden, and she’s not discouraged here either when things get challenging.
“I have a Bunnings just up the road, so I often pop in to buy plants. Even when they die, I just keep planting,” she laughs, showing she’s not one to give up easily.