OREANDA-NEWS. Jusco wins best practice award for 'customer service and complaint management in water distribution' instituted by the Indian Utility Knowledge and Networking Forum (IUKAN), on February 13, 2014, at the 2nd annual conference of IUKAN at New Delhi. AP Singh, DGM, customer relations and corporate communications, Jusco, received the award.

This is yet another achievement for team Jusco in the area of customer service and complaint management. Jusco has already won the national award for customer service and complaint management in 2009, and the award was given away by the then President of India, Pratibha Patil, at New Delhi. Since then Jusco has won many awards in the area of water distribution, power distribution and infrastructure management as well.

The IUKAN Forum introduced Utility Best Practice Awards to recognise practical and innovative ways employed by utility operators, their business partners and stakeholders to drive improvements in systems and service delivery to end consumers. The awards intend to bring a paradigm shift in the way a utility looks at its grounds team, which is the actual asset and wealth manager for the distribution utility.

Best practice nominations were received from across utility service providers and public and private utilities. Companies who participated include leading public utilities such as MSEDCL, Bescom, DGVCL, Mysore City Corporation, Vadodara Municipal Corporation, PGVCL, UGVCL and private utilities such as BSES Rajdhani, BSES Yamuna, CESC, NPCL, Jusco, Enzen, GTL, MVV Water Utility, Tata Power Company, Tata Power Delhi Distribution, Reliance Infrastructure, Wesco and Orange City Water.

A total of 72 nominations were selected based on pre-qualification parameters set by the jury across the categories of customer services and complaint management, metering effectiveness and smart infrastructure, billing and collection, operations, maintenance and asset management, loss reduction, theft control and vigilance, people management and development, bid management and operations takeover, innovations, and others.

The esteemed jury evaluating these nominations were drawn from the IUKAN advisory and mentors, consisting of Prabhakar Kukde, ex director Tata Power, ex technical director of the Maharashtra State Electricity Board) and Reji Pillai, president, India Smart Grid Forum, for the power track and Malini Shankar, principal secretary, government of Maharashtra, and Srinivas Chary, dean, research and management studies at the Administrative Staff College of India, for the water track.

Along with the award function, a landmark conference - IUKAN 2014 - held on February 13, 2014, at Le Meridien, in New Delhi, was a very successful event as expected. The conference witnessed the presence of representatives from top notch companies from the power supply and water distribution sector. All the speakers focused on the various innovative reforms that had been successfully implemented in the utility sector. The theme of the conference was 'Complementing reforms bottom-up: Through improved operationalisation and engaged local ecosystem'. The aim of the conference was to help the utility service providers enlarge their views about improvements in their areas including strategy, policy, contract, services and operations.

As part of the proceedings of the conference, a best practice journal was published, probably the first compendium at the national level, which includes 72 best practices shared by the power, water and waste-water industry players including public and private utility operators and their service providers. These best practices were published in the form of a best practice journal for wider dissemination and adoption in the industry. Accenture supported the wider dissemination of the best practices by partnering with IUKAN as the best practices showcase partner.