With more than 3 million customers, 180 municipalities, 30,000 kilometers of water pipes and more than 1,500 employees, De Watergroep is the largest drinking water company in Flanders.
The digital transformation trajectory in a nutshell
Halfway through 2016, De Watergroep took the initiative to start an ambitious digital transformation program, with the main aim of improving operational excellence with the focus on social interest. This has led to:
- Faster response times to 3 million customers experiencing a leakage or malfunction in the more than 30,000 kilometers of De Watergroep pipeline network, by digitizing the issuing of work instructions to engineers.
- Increased employee (± 1,500) productivity for De Watergroep through self-service solutions. Removing waiting times and digitizing time-consuming administrative processes lead to more productive working hours per day.
- Linking the new software to each other and issuing the right data to different Front-End and Back-End systems via a new integration architecture linked to an API management platform.
“The collaboration between De Watergroep and Devoteam resulted in a successful integration within our hybrid environment.”
Bert de Winter
Innovation Director at De Watergroep
3 new cloud applications
MoKa (Mobile Office): MoKa, the mobile office for De Watergroep, is an application with thirteen components, including meter management, HR information, planning and a command and messaging module. The (physical) pick-up of work instructions at the regional office falls away with MoKa.
Online customer zone (e-loket): The online customer zone is a digital portal where customers of De Watergroep can do a lot themselves, such as passing on water levels, relocations, viewing and paying invoices, monitoring water consumption, etc.
Vesta Pro (Self-service human resource portal): Vesta Pro is a completely new system that covers everything related to personnel matters. With Vesta Pro, everyone can manage their own personnel information, make and follow up requests via his or her digital file.
The complexity of the project
As a government service, De Watergroep has to combine various platforms, suppliers and technologies. Front-End (including the three new cloud applications) and Back-End systems must seamlessly connect and together they must provide the right data. Each software/system worked in a different way, with different data formats. The new integration architecture had to solve this in the technical field.
In the human field, employees must learn to deal with the new self-service digitization solutions. Training sessions, workshops and instructions were used to explain the benefits of these new solutions to the staff.
Both technical digitization and changes in the human field had to be implemented within 8 months, in collaboration with more than five different parties.
Value for internal and external customer
Internal processes are handled more efficiently by the collaboration between new digital solutions, the new integration architecture and other Front-End / Back-End systems. Operational productivity has increased through the digitization of work instructions for the employees and the improvement of HR processes, making these processes more efficient and improving data quality.
Customers are helped faster by digitized work instructions and a better follow-up process for engineers (workers). They can now complete more jobs in one day than before. In short, faster response times, better accessibility and better coordination between De Watergroep, its employees and internal / external customers.
Software Factory Development method
As middle-ware an agile approach has been chosen, while the linked systems sometimes completely applied different development methods. Frequent consultation to align all integrations required a different approach with short sprints.
“We are very satisfied with the application and rapid adoption of more than 150 new web services, developed through the ‘Factory Development Method’.”
Cristina Orodel
IT Portfolio Manager at De Watergroep
The integration architecture and all web services have been developed according to this ‘factory approach’: Clear and repeatable process steps, fully automated quality controls, high productivity, high quality web services and a low number of defects (<2%).
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Awards |
- Publica Awards 2018 (BE): Winner of the public award in the Technology category!
- Computable Awards 2018 (NL): Nominated in the ‘ICT Project of the Year in the Big Businesses’ category.
Devoteam’s Agile IT solutions
We bring the Agile IT basis for your digital transformation. The Agile IT Platform is a new IT operational model to enable your digital transformation. We help you to:
- Continuously innovate
- Be prepared for rapid changes within the company
- Both operationally and financially efficient
- Adopt new paradigms and mindsets