Water market pioneer charts course from Shetland to England

As chief executive of the division of Scottish Water that deals with business customers, Ms Dow will be leading its charge into England when the non-domestic market there opens up in April 2017.

From that point, non-domestic customers will be able to choose which company to get their water supplies and sewage services from. Businesses in Scotland have been able to choose supplier since April 2008.

As the market is worth £2.5bn south of the border compared with £370m in Scotland, Ms Dow reckons liberalisation provides a "massive" opportunity for Business Stream.

"We don't need a big share of the English market to double the size of the business we have got today."

Sitting in a spotless meeting room in Business Stream's smart modern offices, she says the company is very well placed to compete in England.

Business Stream came into being after Scotland decided to become the first country in the world to open up the non-domestic market to competition. It has been selling water and associated waste services provided by its parent Scottish Water and dealing with the customers concerned since the market was liberalised.

"We have seven years experience of operating in a commercial environment, seven years experience of delivering what customers want, of managing a wholesaler in Scottish Water," notes Ms Dow.

With regulators still finalising plans for how the market will operate south of the border, Ms Dow is coy about disclosing details of sales or market share targets.

However, the 41-year-old's confidence in Business Stream's prospects shines through.

She says Business Stream is looking at a number of different options for tackling the market.

These include potentially acquiring the retail arm of an English water company, forming joint ventures with others or acquiring groups of customers.

"We are having discussions, exploring a number of different avenues with English water companies," says Ms Dow, who adds: "We are not ruling anything out."

The mum of two has no fear about the prospect of competing with giants like Thames Water.

"It's not about size or scale; it's about understanding what customers want and delivering it."

Business Stream has retained around 80 per cent of the market in Scotland although firms from outside the country have been able to compete for share since 2008.

Ms Dow, who was a member of the team that developed Business Stream, is evangelical about the benefits of separating water firms' business and domestic operations.

While Business Stream remains a 100 per cent owned subsidiary of Scottish Water, she reckons customers have enjoyed huge gains in terms of the cost and quality of the services they have received since it became an arm's length organisation.

"We have delivered benefits of over £130m including discounts. Seventy per cent of customers are paying less."

Other benefits include having a real focus on helping customers use less water.

Business Stream has developed more than 60 different products such as water efficiency devices. Ms Dow says the introduction of single consolidated bills has been a boon for customers that used to receive multiple demands, such as Glasgow City Council.

She reckons Scottish Water is very much an infrastructure business, concerned with managing assets like reservoirs and pipes in accordance with the demands of regulators. By contrast, Business Stream is entirely focused on customers and has no assets.

" We live or die by the standard of service. There's nothing like the thought of losing customers to encourage you to raise the bar from the service perspective."

While English water firms such as Severn Trent and Thames Water are in private ownership, Ms Dow appears to have no doubt that Business Stream can continue to flourish in the public sector.

On the question of whether the organisation should be privatised she says: "It's above my pay grade but what I would says is it (being in the public sector) has not held us back."

The company made £38m pre-tax profit on revenues of £364m in the latest financial year. It has around 350 employees.

Ms Dow is looking forward to playing an important role in the preparations for liberalisation south of the border in coming months. She represents Business Stream on Open Market Water Limited, the body set up to help deliver the competitive market for water and sewerage services for non-household customers in England by April 2017.

The work will allow her to draw on experience of working in markets that have undergone big changes that is not limited to her time in the water business.

Before joining Scottish Water in 2002, Ms Dow spent four years at Scottish Hydroelectric owner SSE. She joined Scottish Hydroelectric just six months before that business merged with Southern Electric to form SSE, setting in train a huge integration process.

Ms Dow's work at Perth-based SSE included managing the finances of its emerging telecommunications business at a time of rapid growth in that market.

She gained plenty of experience of working away from home in her youth, when she spent weekday nights boarding at Anderson High School on the Shetland mainland. Weekends were spent at the family home on the island of Unst, "as far north as you can go".

These days Perth is home to Ms Dow, who did her accountancy training with a small practice in the fair city before moving to a bigger outfit in Dundee.

She has no plans to move on from Business Stream and appears to be genuinely enthused by the prospect of leading the company through what could be a period of significant growth.

"I want to do a damn good job of what I'm being paid to do."

For all that this may involve spending lots of time south of the border, Ms Dow sees no reason why Business Stream should move its headquarters there. She notes the company has built up a very skilled workforce in Scotland, and can access a big pool of high quality potential recruits in places like Edinburgh.

"It will most definitely stay here."