This German entity supplies drinking water to more than 320,000 people in 63 municipalities south of Saxony-Anhalt. In addition, MIDEWA operates as a reliable partner for associations in Germany’s drinking water supply and wastewater disposal industry. MIDEWA focuses on digitalising its processes, having adopted a ‘move to the cloud’ policy and mindset.
Overview
As a trusted provider of drinking water to 63 different municipalities in the south of Germany, MIDEWA searched for a digital solution that allowed external access to the annually curated drinking water reports. The goal was to provide relevant text-based and graphic information to every mayor governing each of the 63 municipalities.
The solution needed to adhere to the data security protocols of its parent company, Veolia. With the reports containing public information, it was integral that the target viewer accessed only the data relevant to their municipality.
The intended solution needed to present pertinent data in up-to-date and easy-to-understand visualisations.
Problem Statement
Initially, generating annual reports for each municipality was a time-consuming and non-digital process. The procedure eventually switched to digital-first in nature with the help of Zoho Analytics.
However, the Zoho Analytics solution limited user access to internal use only, which meant the reports intended for MIDEWA’s customers included copy-pasted screenshots from Zoho and the manual creation and sending of multiple PDF files. This process was neither efficient regarding time nor resources.
The client utilised Zoho Analytics for one year before deciding to upgrade their digital solution.
Scope
Having exhibited success with its parent company, Veolia, MIDEWA sought the support of Irem Wedekind, Change Manager – Remediation Lead at Devoteam G Cloud.
Time was of the essence, and the customer required a quick solution before a complete cloud migration, so they decided to publish the reports for the first time by connecting the existing on-site SQL database. After the Cloud migration, they would run the reports directly from BigQuery on the Google Cloud Platform. This was a good idea at the time, save for one major issue: the SQL connector didn’t support German characters “ä, ö, ü, or ß”. This would mean that the dashboards could not show towns spelt with any of those letters in the dashboard. Fortunately, this issue was discovered in the early stages of the project.
The proposed solution was to transpose all the data into Google Sheets to meet the reporting deadline. Upon completing the deadline and agreeing on the dashboard content and layout, the company was prepared to redo the process in the Google Cloud Platform.
Process & What We Did
During the cloud migration, Devoteam G Cloud uncovered yet another hurdle that delayed the implementation of the new solution. While all the data had been migrated to GCP, every field type was inaccurately formatted, and their data needed remediation.
However, to be processed correctly by Google Data Studio, the data needed to be categorised accurately as either float or integer types. Devoteam G Cloud collaborated closely and upheld a constant flow of communication with the client’s IT team to format each field accurately.
The next step was to design a solution for SQL and BigQuery to create a possible connection between Data Studio and MIDEWA’s outdated data sources.
Going forward, Devoteam G Cloud successfully used the client’s data sources to create customisable dashboards to represent the necessary data.
Before cooperating with Irem, we were told it would be impossible or difficult to pull from our various data sources and have the data visualised on one dashboard. Not only did she say it was no problem, but she also provided us with customisable dashboards. Now, we can even change the way the data is presented for better understanding.”
– Karina Wasmund, Sales Representative, MIDEWA
Despite unexpected delays in the timeline and impromptu changes, Devoteam G Cloud proudly delivered every client request.
With Google Cloud Platform, it was relatively easy to connect all sources of data to show in one dashboard.”
– Irem Wedekind, Change Manager, Devoteam G Cloud
In addition to developing clear and customisable visualisations, the dashboards created have been automated to show up-to-date data about MIDEWA’s water supply logistics continuously. Mayors can also navigate their own dashboards through their personal login and toggle views to show data spanning the last five years.
Mayors can each sign in securely through Single Sign-On with their Google Cloud identities to view up-to-date information about their municipality’s water supply and waste disposal services.
This new automation feature erases the need for the team at MIDEWA to create annual reports. Furthermore, when live photos are uploaded to MIDEWA’s cloud storage, they are automatically categorised to their relevant municipality without the need for human input.
Devoteam G Cloud has also provided the client with an individualised guidebook to help answer any questions or concerns its teams may have while operating in the GCP environment to have complete autonomy over their processes.
Outcomes & Results
For MIDEWA, the most important metric is the current accessibility for each municipality representative. Mayors can view the data of their own jurisdiction without having access to another municipality’s data.
Another result was the integration of Google Analytics to the dashboard, which provides the dashboard admins viewing access to the user traffic on the dashboard.
MIDEWA considers their migration to GCP a significant investment that will save both time and resources in the long run.
The team at MIDEWA has stated how pleased they are with Irem’s work and high availability and constant communication.
We were working like colleagues. It wasn’t like someone who came to teach us from a position of above. She explained everything she did and was always willing to give all the information to our team so that we could work independently afterwards.”
– Karina Wasmund, Sales Representative, MIDEWA.
MIDEWA plans to add information about fire hydrants in each municipality to its visualisation dashboards soon. Currently, it is an external project. However, the goal is to avoid each mayor having several logins to view data.
Now the customer can provide elevated services for its customers.
Since we operate out of a rural area, we are starting to realise lately that the mayors from younger generations are impressed with our digital solutions.”
– Karina Wasmund, Sales Representative, MIDEWA.
With this new solution, MIDEWA is proud to show why its primary customers are obliged to continue working with MIDEWA.
Devoteam G Cloud is currently running an assessment project with the parent company, Veolia, to modernise its IT systems, including implementing Google AI for future forecasts based on the water data. This will mean even smarter dashboards.
Do you want to follow MIDEWA’s footsteps?