Water utilities are often challenged to do more with less. With ever-growing pressures on service delivery, quality, and cost, the demand for improved experiences, and justifications for cost of service are at an all-time high. One solution is to adopt customer-centric approaches to service delivery, asset management strategies, and investments.
A customer-centric approach adds velocity and adaptability to stability, creating a critical source of competitive advantage in volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous conditions.
In order to facilitate change, industry needs to better understand asset data and data- related issues. A customer- centric approach is achievable by eliminating data over-collection and generating useful insights holistically.
There are seven data management elements that can assist organisations to make the paradigm shift from data silos to collaborative data use. Each element has value to an organisation. But experience and research show that true collaboration comes only when all seven are in place and work together within a platform-based approach that integrates across data silos.
The elements below describe the organic system that enables a data-driven approach to customer-centric decision making. Together, these seven elements form the basis for an overarching digital water platform.
- Strategy, innovation, and governance At the heart of every strong digital effort is the need for a clear vision, empowered by innovation and governance. With a digital water platform, all data is treated as an asset ensuring it is well defined and aligned, with access granted only to authorised people. Components include:
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Digital strategy and roadmap
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Stewardship, partnership and alignment
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Open innovation and design thinking
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Data, digital, and operations governance
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Security, masking and privacy.
- Development and operations A comprehensive development and operations layer underpins a digital water platform. It includes:
- End-to-end operations
- Platform monitoring and managed services
- Agile development, testing, and release management
- Scheduling and orchestration for updates
- Centralised business rules repository and measurement framework
- Metadata and master data closely managed.
- Data capture A multichannel data capture mechanism can ensure data is loaded into the digital water platform as quickly and effectively as possible. Features include:
- Designed and developed based on real-time data processing
- Seamless integration with modern edge compute and legacy systems
- Feature extraction and pattern recognition
- Ad-hoc files can be quickly uploaded to platform.
- Data curation The evolutionary data curation layer ensures all data is stored, cleansed, and transformed quickly. Features include:
- Real-time data feeds can be configured
- Operations and data holdings store all raw data and associated metadata
- All data is profiled, cleansed, and fused together
- Curated data model delivers a robust, centralised data model
- Data lab delivers specialised environments.
- Digital insights Handling data effectively within a water utility helps the business, operators, and decision makers understand historical trends, monitor current state, forecast the future, and automate mundane tasks. This includes:
- Business analytics
- Descriptive analytics
- Predictive analytics
- Prescriptive analytics.
- Data interface The data interface allows interaction with the platform through a range of techniques and screens based on need and process so users can:
- Dynamically explore and search data for new insights
- Apply sophisticated mathematical, statistical, and engineering analysis techniques
- Make use of sophisticated data visualisation, dashboards, and performance management
- Publish new insights and content through a centralised knowledge portal
- Receive notification of dynamic rules via email or SMS
- Be automatically recommended of new content and insights by the system
- Action, approve and monitor insights and decisions
- Develop specialised mobile apps as the platform is application-programming interface (API) enabled
- Water applications We have developed modules and applications specific to water utilities to help accelerate the delivery of targeted insights across the business. Components include:
- Predictive asset failure
- Water asset reporting
- Workforce optimisation
- Maintenance optimisation
- Overflow and spill prevention
- Event and disaster simulation
- Digital plant performance
- Risk prediction and monitoring
- Field force mobile app delivers anywhere, anytime access to knowledge, insights, and automation
- Capital program portfolio optimisation.
Today’s environment is pressing water utilities to become more integrated, in order to become more customer-centric. In response, a new approach to data management to assist decision-making is emerging, that includes these seven elements. These steps enable water utilities to balance stability and dynamism, and thrive in an era of unprecedented opportunity.
To learn more about starting a journey towards a customer-centric approach enabled by data for your water utility, click here.
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