Diagnostic Assessment of Outage Management Value Chain, City Power

10000

total queries handled in the
2023/24 financial year

1 %

of queries resolved within the 24
hour SLA target

~ 1 %

of all queries were duplicates or
repeat calls

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The Story

City Power’s CEO posed a deceptively simple question: ‘Why are customers still without power 24 hours
after logging a query?’ Answering it required Ntiyiso Management Consulting to conduct a forensic, end
to-end diagnostic of City Power’s Outage Management Value Chain, spanning 501,000 queries, 8 Service
Delivery Centres, and a complex web of overlapping systems, informal workarounds, and critical resource
gaps.

What We Did

Mapped the end-to-end customer query resolution process across all 8 Service Delivery Centres, identifying specific challenges at each of the 7 key touchpoint

Conducted ethnographic-style observation in SDCs and dispatch centres to document undocumented informal practices, WhatsApp groups, manual logbooks, direct calls, that had replaced formal SOPs

Analysed over 501,000 queries from the 2023/24 financial year, providing quantitative evidence of inefficiencies including a ~50% duplicate/repeat call rate

Identified systemic root causes: severe system fragmentation across ForceLink, CRM, and SAP; a culture of workarounds; and critical resource gaps in dispatch and field operations

Benchmarked City Power's capabilities against leading utility standards, identifying missing foundational elements such as automated dispatch and real-time customer communication

Significance

Effective diagnostic work doesn’t just describe symptoms, it identifies the systemic causes that no one has
been willing or able to name. By bringing data rigour and honest observation to City Power’s operations,
this engagement created the factual foundation for meaningful operational reform.