Four trends to accelerate digital transformation in the water industry

The common belief that the customer experience ends once water is delivered to a home or business is rapidly evaporating due to digital transformation.

Now, utilities are beginning to understand that the customer experience extends beyond the meter and into the home. Water utilities ― and gas and electricity providers ― have realised that smart meters and smart home technology working together can provide valuable data that improves customer service. When combined, these applications have provided substantial benefits for both customers and the bottom line of utilities. A new ecosystem can be created by integrating smart and IoT-enabled home appliances, smart utility meters and predictive analytics based on historical price data from utilities.

The age of consumer passivity is over, and customers want to be seen, heard and recognised as co-creators. Water providers must elevate customer relationships to allow them to be active participants. New partnerships including multiple types of utilities, utility customers, and appliance manufacturers and vendors can be empowered by combining data from IoT devices. Using real-world data and input from multiple stakeholders, this digital ecosystem can accelerate problem-solving and innovation for the benefit of customers and providers.

In the past, data storing inefficiencies and poor communications between departments resulted in poor employee productivity, information silos and derailed collaboration.

To improve employee productivity, work satisfaction and wellbeing, organisations must adopt digital technologies. The industry will increasingly focus on the gamification of work tasks, training modules, and workplace health and safety. These methods have shown an increase in employee motivation, engagement, and productivity by approximately 90 percent*. These new tools allow for better retention of institutional knowledge as well.

Another major issue facing the water industry is how to overcome an aging workforce, anticipated retirements and the loss of institutional knowledge associated with those events. Retaining and documenting institutional knowledge is critical to the day-to-day and long-term operations of an organisation, and will require new methods to attract and retain skilled and talented workers. The good news is that digital transformation across all sectors has produced innovative approaches that can be adopted by water utilities to anticipate and address these challenges. For example, digital solutions can provide better knowledge storage and transfer to prevent disruption due to the loss of experienced employees.

Digital roadmaps are a way to examine current technology deployed by a utility and allow for identifying areas in the network that could still be optimised. This roadmap can also unlock new ways to serve customers and other stakeholders. Ultimately, a digital roadmap offers a big-picture view of a utility network and allows for continuous improvements. The digital roadmap and continuous improvement approach allow utilities to future-proof their organisations and increase adaptive capacity and resilience holistically rather than using a simple point solution method to address problems like in the past.

To truly future-proof water operations, utilities must prepare for impacts before they are felt in the real world, and water managers must be able to combine operational, meteorological, and climate data. Using a digital twin to predict what might happen in a smart water network is crucial and models how the system will react to extreme precipitation events or monitoring of real-time water use during a drought. The ability to know what is happening, predict and model what may occur, and how a system will react to those events is possible today.

Technology waits for no one. It can feel like a tsunami that never quite reaches shore, driving everyone to brace for impact. There’s a better way. To not react to trends, but tailor the leading business technology to the needs of today. And help intelligently plan and scale for the inevitable changes a dynamic business environment will bring tomorrow.

Infrastructure operators are not always equipped to protect their environment against modern cybersecurity threats –which have amplified since COVID-19. By implementing a 360-degree view of an organisation’s cyber ecosystem, leaders can identify and eliminate today’s blind spots—while also seeing and solving for the threats ahead, so they can accelerate innovation, transformation and growth.

A new era of digital change is being ushered in by the metaverse -a convergence of physical and digital worlds that enables people to move beyond “browsing” to “inhabiting” in a shared experience. Mixed Reality and Design Engineering (MRDE) technologies reshape industrial processes, improve overall efficiency by increasing the perception of the surrounding environment, and enhance staff experience and satisfaction.

Unfortunately, significant disruption to a water system will inevitably occur somewhere and at some point. As climate change related water risks increase, the need for effective, data-driven water management is greater than ever. By leveraging the right technology and focusing on benefits for employees and customers, leaders will be better equipped for future water challenges. Digital tools offer an opportunity to empower utilities to predict system issues with greater accuracy and speed, and to set a new standard for risk assessment planning and response.

[*] Gamification in Utilities: Winning the Engagement Game