smarter data, connected thinking
The future looks bright for smart networks. It is certainly hard to deny their potential: a Waterwise and Arqiva report suggests that deploying a million smart meters (a small part of the smart water puzzle) has the potential to cut UK greenhouse gas emissions by 0.5 per cent over the next fifteen years. More broadly, the global market for smart water management is projected to reach $18.9 billion in 2028. Water companies are rapidly expanding their smart water networks. In April, for example, Thames Water launched blockage predictive models using a smart approach. The UK’s largest water provider states that focusing on smart water networks has driven their investment strategy and forms the cornerstone of their water management strategy.
Egremont sees the insights smart networks can generate as fundamental to our evidence-based approach to transformation. Most of our work these days focuses on helping cross functional teams make sense of complex datasets to drive decision making and efficiency improvements. This helps us to provide a clearer picture of long-term issues, and to provide teams with better information on the root cause of issues, enabling them to take the right action at the right time. This information can then be shared between frontline teams and customer advisors, ensuring that the value generated by smart data use is directly benefitting the customer.
Making smart networks succeed requires investment beyond the financial. Maximising their potential requires connected thinking, and that is often the biggest challenge. A recent panel hosted by Utility Week noted that smart network pilot schemes struggle to embed themselves within business as usual, often due to nebulous benefit cases for investing in smart systems. Rather than inherently having limited benefits, the problem (according to panellists) is that companies apply limited definitions of value, failing to account for broader benefits despite conceptually understanding their potential.
To reap returns from investment in smart networks, utilities need to adopt a big-picture view to using the data generated by smart water assets. Yorkshire Water’s Sheffield project provides a useful case study on how smart water projects can find intelligent uses for smart data. The twelve-month project, which was announced in September 2020, pulled over 4,000 new and existing data sources into a single network management platform. Whilst many expect to realise value from investment in smart water networks by cutting customer-side leaks, the Sheffield pilot took a broader view: measuring the benefits of preventing future bursts or leaks. The pilot is due to be rolled out across Yorkshire Water and aims to stack additional use cases on the datasets, ranging from using the platform as a ‘digital twin’ modelling tool to employing it to mitigate knowledge gaps caused by retirements of long-serving staff.
Transitioning smart network projects into business-as-usual demands that businesses recognise and pursue the broad spectrum of benefits associated with handling data intelligently. Sharing better information with call centres, is another example of how to maximise the significant benefits available. Rising demands on call centres because of their increasing role in enabling customers to make sustainable choices means that better data at the frontline is more important than ever. Public access to up-to-date, relevant information helps redirect customer queries and empowers agents to effectively triage calls. The efficiency created by getting the right data in the right hands at the right time can then be used to drive further sustainability and commercial initiatives. Increasing integration between call and control centres opens further opportunities to use information to predict as well as triage incidents.
Connecting data with human intelligence sits at the heart of making smart networks work and cannot be overlooked when seeking to realise their potential. Any investment strategy must develop a systemic view of the business, learning how best to share data, apply insight, and grow expertise to adapt to the challenges facing the water industry today and in the future.
To find out more please get in touch / +44 (0) 20 7298 7878
Sources
https://diginomica.com/thames-water-gets-smart
https://utilityweek.co.uk/stacking-up-smart-water-investments/
https://utilityweek.co.uk/rising-challenges-in-customer-service/
