"There is no life without water."

 - Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, Nobel Prize-winning biochemist

Municipal water utilities have one of the most important—and unappreciated—tasks in civilization. They bring water to citizens located far from rivers or streams; located instead in apartment buildings, houses and businesses along city streets and highways.

There is indeed, “no life without water.” But to be useful, that water has to be stored, distributed when needed, and contained. For most organizations today, whether commercial or municipal, there is no industrial life without data. But that data must be available, understandable and actionable. It’s amazing to learn that more than 50% of businesses (and this could include municipalities as well) have more data than they have the data analytics capacity to handle or analyze effectively.

When you’re watching a great movie it absorbs you into the story, the action and the characters. It's probably not a great movie if you find yourself thinking about other things like; “How did they get that camera angle?” Or “These are really strange sound effects" or even worse "Did I put the laundry in the dryer?" 

There’s a strong correlation between the movie production mechanics and your operations. On your computer or smart device, you want just to see the data from local and remote locations—production, measurements, down time, machine health, maintenance schedules, utility costs—or whatever, as long as it's data you can action upon to help you increase your production, safety, profits or sustainability. You don’t want to fumble around with reporting, why you’re not getting data from the sensors in the compressor, or what happened to last month’s figures. If your current system causes you to do that, you’re ready for a change.

When the real estate market is booming, home buyers will fight for virtually any house that hits the market. It's nice for sellers while it's happening, but eventually, the buyers who chose the best location will hold the properties with the greatest value. Of course there is much more to factor into your decision before committing yourself to a purchase that large; you probably have poured over the area data to see what the crime rate is, how the schools are, what the resale market holds, how far it is to conveniences, how close the neighbors are (or are not), etc...

Predicting long-term market value of anything isn't easy, but there are some tell-tale things to look for before you sign the dotted line that can help give you insight into the long-range value. The most important is of course all that data you can find today, on just about anything!

Trust can be a giant deal-breaker for any relationship. It doesn't matter if it's who should watch your dog when you go on vacation, who you should marry, who babysits your kids, or who you should trust your company data with; it matters big time to you because it impacts you as a person. Broken trust can quickly turn the relationship into something completely unrecognizable in a heartbeat.

A giant part of building trust with anyone is 'seeing' who they really are after you've known them a long time. A very wise person once told me "When someone shows you who they are, believe them."

We totally understand that addressing who you should entrust your data, SaaS and SCADA system to can be a very difficult decision, and one that should not be taken lightly.

You've probably encountered the pain of trying to set up something that you thought was going to be easy and only take a few minutes. It stated it was 'easy' to set up, and of course you're pretty bright so how hard could it really be? And then you open the box... You see more wires, parts, and pieces stuffed in there than SpaceX probably uses to build rockets.

Your heart sinks a bit, your blood pressure instantly rises and you can feel your eyes trying to make sense of the clutter and not knowing what to focus on. Your brain tells you to quickly close that box, and RUN screaming from the room!

Operational data can be very messy and often times lives in many different places: internal systems, spreadsheets, email messages, hand written notes, even mental notes, and more. You need a way to manage all this information so it's available to you and your authorized users at any time for any reason.

By pooling all your operations data together into a cloud-based platform and utilizing cloud applications, you can simplify and cut down on the number of systems you need to support your operations. We've all heard the saying 'sometimes more is less' right? It totally proves true when it comes to your operational data; simplify where it's all combined and stored to get the most from it all.

Maybe you’re looking toward digital transformation but you’re reluctant to move past the old SCADA system on a server in the utility room. You have that one for data monitoring, a separate one for accounting, and another for remote well control. You get different reports from every place, and your department heads spend days in the plot of 1984’s Irreconcilable Differences.

When you do the math for all the benefits of switching to a cloud platform built for industrial use, and then multiply it by the benefit of just how mobile it is and even how it can quickly help all of your systems play nicely together it adds up to a strong return and equals into a much smoother running operation, with much more efficient processes and happier department heads.

Going digital, or Digital Transformation doesn't have to be riddled with complexity or long drawn out time-frames. In fact, it can really be easy, painless and fast and yet still make a huge positive impact on your business.

To stay competitive your company must focus on implementing new digital technologies into your operations to deliver more value to your customers and enable staff to do their job better and with less available internal resources.

To build a digital ecosystem for all stakeholders inside and outside your company means executing digital change activities. Emerson’s Zedi SaaS SCADA is a perfect partner on that journey. We serve various industries and can guide your Digital Transformation journey to your desired destination, and even autonomous operations.

If your company isn't centralizing its data you may be missing out on increasing productivity in your business.

Centralizing data means putting all your operational data into one single place. By consolidating data, your authorized company employees will have quick and easy access from anywhere. All that will be required is a secure internet connection.

Our SaaS (Software as a Service) and SCADA helps your operations compile data from any digital monitoring hardware via gateways that support various protocols into a single centralized cloud location. From a single source, we can deliver real-time data to your computer or mobile device that allows authorized end-users to actively see the information you decide is relevant to each person or role within your organization.

“Baby, It’s Cold Outside” doesn’t begin to describe winters in Wyoming, Alberta and many other parts of the world. Winter lows average well below zero, whatever scale you’re using. It’s why detailed training, safety, planning and teamwork are literally life-and-death issues as we help keep water, wastewater, gas distribution, and of course oil and gas production flowing - in even the coldest, and hottest areas of the globe.

Ask anyone that works outside in temps around 110 degrees in the complete dust and heat of summer in the Texas, or well below zero in Canada - no one leaves the yard without extensive training, preparation, and a carefully checked list, but there are still many, many safety risks to consider before venturing out.