Streamlining Financial Processes for the Division of Industrial Waste

Company Profile: The Metropolitan Sewer District of Greater Cincinnati, Ohio, (MSD) was created in 1968 as a partnership between Hamilton County and its municipalities and is currently managed by the City of Cincinnati. MSD has facilities located throughout the county, serving the wastewater removal and treatment needs of over 800,000 customers in most of the county’s municipalities and townships.

Project: The Metropolitan Sewer District of Greater Cincinnati, Ohio, (MSD) understands the importance of continuously investigating their business processes for opportunities for improvement. Since 2005, TechSolve has repeatedly assisted MSD with their goal of increasing efficiency, decreasing costs, and enhancing the quality of services. Included in this work was an examination of MSD’s billing and accounts payable and receivables processes.

To gain a better understanding of what they did as part of these processes and why they did it, MSD formed cross-functional, interdivisional teams to analyze their financial processes. Through this, MSD began to develop a new perspective on their operations, which led to new, more efficient practices. The permit and sampling fees paid by industrial wastewater users is being reduced from five payments a year to one – freeing up millions of dollars in increased cash flow and greatly reducing the administrative burden. The organization of MSD’s lab was also restructured, which enabled it to respond better to variances in types of sampling demand.

Results: Through their persistent and progressive improvement efforts, The Metropolitan Sewer District of Greater Cincinnati, Ohio, (MSD) was able to develop better work methods and identify realistic process improvements that resulted in significant time savings.

    Redundant payments, paperwork, and approvals were all eliminated, and MSD was able to:

     

  • Reduce processing time by 26%
  • Improve lead time by 38%

“TechSolve has been instrumental in helping us find ways to improve and achieve efficiencies without sacrificing quality of service.  I recommend them to any public sector agency interested in finding new and better ways to carry out their business processes.”

Kathy Rahtz, Assistant to the Director