Putting People First: The Human Side Of Digital Transformation

Source: Xylem Vue

November 6, 2023

By Peter Kraft, Senior Practice Lead and Solution Architect, Xylem

The digital transformation of water utilities has the potential to unlock efficiencies and enable resiliency against a range of challenges, including population growth, climate change, water scarcity, and more. While the chosen technologies matter, it is all for nothing without one key element: the human component.

According to insights from Xylem’s recent paper, Ripple Effect: A Movement Towards Digital Transformation, when people help shape the process, they take ownership. After all, even with high levels of automation, it is ultimately operators and other end users who act on data or enact processes. As such, successful digital transformation requires water utilities to put teams before technology.

Operators In The Driving Seat

One of the biggest obstacles in digital transformation is the lingering scars of previous failed efforts or unrealized promises. In such cases, leadership is working against a tide of past grievances. When workers do not trust technology or the managers that impose it upon them, the odds of a successful implementation or execution decline dramatically.

To change the script, water utilities need to start from the perspective of the end users themselves. By connecting with operators, leadership can take note of their challenges and priorities and incorporate those into the strategy before vetting and choosing technologies. When workers feel the strategy and, ultimately, the technology are designed to fit their needs, it maximizes the odds of them fully engaging with and utilizing the intended solutions.

Buffalo Sewer Authority (BSA) used this approach to change how its team works together. The BSA sewer system serves less than 300,000 people but was built to serve up to 1 million. In an effort to use the overcapacity to its advantage, BSA began building its dynamically optimized sewer system before really turning on the lights with a real-time sensor network and digital tools. However, it also kept its real-time control strategy, technology, and algorithms away from its operators, who saw the whole program as a black box. And it had limited results.

When BSA evolved the approach to focus on people, daylighted the strategy, and embraced a culture of digital and innovation, the project flourished. Now, operators are engaged at every turn. The utility also implemented a real-time decision-support system that gives operators a clear view of wastewater buildups and recommendations on where to move water during heavy rain. As a result, BSA reduced combined sewer overflow volumes by 450 million gallons a year, saving $145 million in unnecessary capital expenditures.

Show The Value (But Listen, Too)

According to an April 2023 SWAN Americas Alliance report, the best way to increase comfort levels around digital innovation is to continually inform and empower all stakeholders within an organization. To do this, utilities can form steering committees and/or working groups that allow leadership to share results of technologies.

However, this flow of information is not one way. Leadership must advocate for bi-directional communication, where leaders understand the daily challenges of utility workers and workers can see the relevance of their work in achieving broader strategic goals. Listening becomes a key leadership trait in building a collaborative and strategy-driven organizational culture.

Data And Collaboration

This above-mentioned collaboration is key to shaping a digital strategy through the lens of daily work and thus keeping operators empowered and engaged. Malaysia’s largest water utility, Pengurusan Air Selangor Sendirian Berhad (Air Selangor), leverages data to drive cross-functional collaboration and improve outcomes.

Air Selangor has used data and digital tools to meet a variety of objectives, such as improving customer engagement and satisfaction via smart metering and reducing non-revenue water with intelligent leak detection and burst pipe monitoring. Air Selangor implemented what it calls a “360-degree digital transformation strategy,” with integration across departments, systems, and data sets at its core. An executive dashboard with near-real-time performance information pulls data from as many as 40 systems into a central data lake. To ensure the data is meaningful the company has cultivated what it calls a “digital working culture,” in part by establishing data-focused teams that cut across multiple departments.

Such cross-functional teams help break down two silos that often prohibit digital implementation success. The first is the data silo. In the past, digital solutions were built to address the needs of individual departments – e.g., billing systems, computerized maintenance management systems (CMMS), SCADA, etc. Breaking down the walls between these systems and being able to cross-compare and share the data across different departments builds efficiencies and yields insights not possible with any single data source alone.

The second silo is personnel. Workers from any given department understand the importance their role plays in the overall operation of the utility. Having cross-functional teams increases awareness of how the challenges of other departments impact their own. When done right, such teams can foster cooperation not just across departments but also across age groups and internal hierarchies.

While digital technologies have tremendous potential for water utilities, that potential cannot be unlocked without people. Getting buy-in from operators is critical, which requires more than just the same old promises; it means giving end users a say in the goals and overall strategy, as well as constant bi-directional communication. Technology is a means to an end, but the workers are the means to success.

Source:https://www.wateronline.com/doc/putting-people-first-the-human-side-of-digital-transformation-0001?

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Putting People First: The Human Side Of Digital Transformation

Source: Xylem Vue

November 6, 2023

By Peter Kraft, Senior Practice Lead and Solution Architect, Xylem

The digital transformation of water utilities has the potential to unlock efficiencies and enable resiliency against a range of challenges, including population growth, climate change, water scarcity, and more. While the chosen technologies matter, it is all for nothing without one key element: the human component.

According to insights from Xylem’s recent paper, Ripple Effect: A Movement Towards Digital Transformation, when people help shape the process, they take ownership. After all, even with high levels of automation, it is ultimately operators and other end users who act on data or enact processes. As such, successful digital transformation requires water utilities to put teams before technology.

Operators In The Driving Seat

One of the biggest obstacles in digital transformation is the lingering scars of previous failed efforts or unrealized promises. In such cases, leadership is working against a tide of past grievances. When workers do not trust technology or the managers that impose it upon them, the odds of a successful implementation or execution decline dramatically.

To change the script, water utilities need to start from the perspective of the end users themselves. By connecting with operators, leadership can take note of their challenges and priorities and incorporate those into the strategy before vetting and choosing technologies. When workers feel the strategy and, ultimately, the technology are designed to fit their needs, it maximizes the odds of them fully engaging with and utilizing the intended solutions.

Buffalo Sewer Authority (BSA) used this approach to change how its team works together. The BSA sewer system serves less than 300,000 people but was built to serve up to 1 million. In an effort to use the overcapacity to its advantage, BSA began building its dynamically optimized sewer system before really turning on the lights with a real-time sensor network and digital tools. However, it also kept its real-time control strategy, technology, and algorithms away from its operators, who saw the whole program as a black box. And it had limited results.

When BSA evolved the approach to focus on people, daylighted the strategy, and embraced a culture of digital and innovation, the project flourished. Now, operators are engaged at every turn. The utility also implemented a real-time decision-support system that gives operators a clear view of wastewater buildups and recommendations on where to move water during heavy rain. As a result, BSA reduced combined sewer overflow volumes by 450 million gallons a year, saving $145 million in unnecessary capital expenditures.

Show The Value (But Listen, Too)

According to an April 2023 SWAN Americas Alliance report, the best way to increase comfort levels around digital innovation is to continually inform and empower all stakeholders within an organization. To do this, utilities can form steering committees and/or working groups that allow leadership to share results of technologies.

However, this flow of information is not one way. Leadership must advocate for bi-directional communication, where leaders understand the daily challenges of utility workers and workers can see the relevance of their work in achieving broader strategic goals. Listening becomes a key leadership trait in building a collaborative and strategy-driven organizational culture.

Data And Collaboration

This above-mentioned collaboration is key to shaping a digital strategy through the lens of daily work and thus keeping operators empowered and engaged. Malaysia’s largest water utility, Pengurusan Air Selangor Sendirian Berhad (Air Selangor), leverages data to drive cross-functional collaboration and improve outcomes.

Air Selangor has used data and digital tools to meet a variety of objectives, such as improving customer engagement and satisfaction via smart metering and reducing non-revenue water with intelligent leak detection and burst pipe monitoring. Air Selangor implemented what it calls a “360-degree digital transformation strategy,” with integration across departments, systems, and data sets at its core. An executive dashboard with near-real-time performance information pulls data from as many as 40 systems into a central data lake. To ensure the data is meaningful the company has cultivated what it calls a “digital working culture,” in part by establishing data-focused teams that cut across multiple departments.

Such cross-functional teams help break down two silos that often prohibit digital implementation success. The first is the data silo. In the past, digital solutions were built to address the needs of individual departments – e.g., billing systems, computerized maintenance management systems (CMMS), SCADA, etc. Breaking down the walls between these systems and being able to cross-compare and share the data across different departments builds efficiencies and yields insights not possible with any single data source alone.

The second silo is personnel. Workers from any given department understand the importance their role plays in the overall operation of the utility. Having cross-functional teams increases awareness of how the challenges of other departments impact their own. When done right, such teams can foster cooperation not just across departments but also across age groups and internal hierarchies.

While digital technologies have tremendous potential for water utilities, that potential cannot be unlocked without people. Getting buy-in from operators is critical, which requires more than just the same old promises; it means giving end users a say in the goals and overall strategy, as well as constant bi-directional communication. Technology is a means to an end, but the workers are the means to success.

Source:https://www.wateronline.com/doc/putting-people-first-the-human-side-of-digital-transformation-0001?

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