Twelve months ago, Severn Trent Services Water Hygiene rebranded as Aqualytix to better reflect the long-term direction of the business.
‘Aqua’ represents expertise in water treatment and Legionella control – plus roots in the water industry. ‘Lytix’ represents harnessing data to transform the customer experience.
One year on, the business has gone from strength to strength – generating record profits – and has since acquired water treatment consultancy MA Solutions. The Aqualytix business makes a critical contribution to the success of the Severn Trent Services family of businesses, part of Severn Trent Plc.
Neil Tod, managing director of Aqualytix, reflects on the success of the last 12 months and shares his ambitions for 2024.
He says: “We’ve had our best year to date, and when people ask me what’s driven our success, I tell them it’s having a long-term plan centred around making the right investments.
“By continuously investing in our people and technology and acquiring like-minded businesses, we’ve been able to add more value to our customers and run a more sustainable operation.
“For example, over the last year, we’ve seen a 220% increase in the number of water assets we service and a 215% increase in the tasks we’ve delivered. On top of that, we’ve run 27% more training sessions on water systems management while maintaining our position as one of the UK’s leading Legionella training course providers.”
Neil Tod, Managing Director
People at the core of the business
The number of people working for Aqualytix has increased by 15% over the last year, and when surveyed, employees scored 8.8/10 for their engagement, above industry benchmarks.
Neil says: “By restructuring the management team, acquiring new talent, and giving our people the tools and support they need to do a great job for our customers – we’ve created a culture I’m really proud of.”
This culture appears to be paying off as surveyed customers say, ‘They are just really good with their communication. Their engineers know their stuff.’ And ‘They always give us a call before they come. They are always here on time. The engineer who comes here has been for the last few years and knows us. I would absolutely recommend them.’
Ash Osborne, a regional supervisor, started working for Aqualytix in June 2023. He says: “I joined Aqualytix because I wanted a more challenging role where I could grow and develop. But at the same time, it had to be a company with the right cultural fit.
“Since moving to Aquaytix, I’ve had greater responsibility. It’s a bigger organisation, part of a bigger company, but it still has a family feel. I also know there’s more opportunity to progress.”
Additionally, the organisation’s focus on safety and wellbeing has resulted in zero lost time incidents (LTIs) in the last 12 months, and employees have been supported when they’ve faced health challenges with colleagues taking on their work while off sick or helping with vital fundraising. Like Guy Hadland, head of sales at Aqualytix, and Darren Prior, water treatment technician.
A Paperless Business
Neil and the team have turned Aqualytix into a paperless business by exploiting technological advances in water asset software. This has led to customer, cost, and environmental benefits.
He explains: “Our customers can see their water assets on one system and everything they need to know about them, including what we’ve done to ‘service’ them.
“This has transformed our business in so many ways. From a customer perspective, it means there’s full transparency. We can sit down with a customer and look at the same real-time picture to make quicker and more informed decisions. It also allows us to tangibly demonstrate the difference we’re making, for example, improvements in water asset compliance status.
“Investments like this have helped to increase our customer contract retention rate to over 90% and boost our NPS score over 50 – while cutting down things like error rates, man-hours, and journey times.”
The next 12 months will see Aqualytix relentlessly stick to its long-term plan and continue to reinvest profits into the business. However, there’ll be a greater focus on adding more value to customers under greater pressure to cut costs and demonstrate their commitment to sustainability.
Neil explains: “Organisations are expected to jump through more hoops to win work amidst the cost of living crisis. And rightly so. The challenge is to continue making a positive difference in our customer’s lives without increasing their financial burden.
“We’re also committed to delivering on our sustainability plan anchored around achieving net zero operational performance and adding greater value to our communities. For example, I’m excited to migrate our fleet to electric and work with the education sector to provide more opportunities for school and college leavers.”
For more information about Aqualytix, please visit the website.
