Flow Your Operation Better With Digital Transformation: 10 Tips from Louisville Water & KloudGin

Louisville Water Company (LWC) is known for their high-quality water and their product “Louisville Pure Tap®.” LWC needed to modernize their systems and pull them together with a field based digital transformation, to service a coverage area of 1,000 square miles and more than 1 million customers.

For Obe Everett, Louisville Water’s Director of PMO and Business Systems Support, there were several challenges:

• Systems were over 30 years old.
• Processes were manual and paper-driven with no integration across operational silos.
• Data was not accurately represented from their field team and was inflexible.
• Service orders and work orders were entered into different systems and printed out. Data was lacking, and manual entry wasn’t cost effective.

It was time to get LWC’s workers the most modern and easy-to-use digital tool in their toolbox, and KloudGin’s field mobile application provided deep integration to ESRI, their SO from CCB, WO from WAM and other mission critical
system infrastructure, all on a mobile device.

Louisville Water Company’s core Digital Transformation framework was based on this approach:

• Standardize: to a common platform/framework, that’s easier to support.
• Simplify: so people internally can use data and systems more readily, and support and enhance the methods quickly.
• Consolidate: create a common data architecture that provides easy integration, data exchange, and maintenance.

Baseline

• Establish a Framework – for prioritizing the objectives of the digital transformation program. – Standardize, Simplify, and Consolidate
• Have a Clear Vision of the Game Changers – what is the low hanging fruit, and what will chart the course for success. It’s all about people. Our Field Resource, our customers … and delivering a high-quality product – Water – that is a critical life sustainingresource.
• Always be Prepared to Deal with Challenges –there are always circumstances in any project that will disrupt execution. Some more than others.  As a result, you must adapt, modify expectations, the way we work, socialize the changes, and adjust.

Here are 10 tips to help flow your operation better with digital transformation:

1. Bring in all stakeholders early; look to achieve maximum value across all your silos. And digitally transform and mobile enable your operations, field service and workforce so that they can increase productivity and safety and open new revenue opportunities for your Utility.
2. Look for best practices and applications that can schedule all Asset and Customer Service work in one scalable engine across the enterprise.
3. Stick to the facts to get things done.
4. Set the standard to exceed requirements, not just meet them.
5. Keep the documented project goals and objectives in mind for all decisions.
6. Align everyone to work towards one cohesive objective.
7. Complete milestones on time and under budget.
8. Use “tough love” when necessary.
9. Be able to move nimbly and with agility; and adjust digitally to (new) conditions. With the right transformation application in place, you can do it.
10. Expect the unexpected. Prepare.