How a BI Platform Helps Optimize Operations for a Water Utility Enterprise: The Experience of Ulyanovsk Oblast Vodokanal

Ulyanovsk Oblast Vodokanal is one of the region’s largest public water utility enterprises, originally established back in the 1970s. However, its active development truly began in 2018, when the process of consolidating water supply systems under a single regional operator was launched. At that time, the utility served only four districts within the Ulyanovsk Oblast. Today, the enterprise supplies drinking water to residents across 59 settlements and 15 municipal districts in the region. Every day, the utility provides water to more than 203,000 people.

The scale of the utility infrastructure has also grown exponentially. For instance, while six years ago the enterprise had just 26 pumping stations on its balance sheet, it now operates 103, and the number of water wells has jumped from 29 to 361 units. Currently, the total length of the networks maintained by the company stands at 2,964.3 km, which includes 183.5 km of wastewater and sewerage networks

As Ulyanovsk Vodokanal’s footprint expanded year after year, the volume of data requiring rapid processing grew proportionally. For every settlement or section of the water supply network, the company needs to track daily metrics such as the volume of water pumped into the system, non-revenue water (losses), asset failure rates, collection utility payment percentages, accounts receivable amounts, and so on.

Under these conditions, the enterprise faced only two potential courses of action: either increase headcount with every expansion of the service area—which would inevitably lead to escalating payroll expenses—or implement a BI analytics system that could be easily scaled as new sectors joined the utility network. In the latter scenario, the one-time system installation costs would definitely pay off over the long term. The executive board opted for the second approach, setting a goal to build an end-to-end analytical system for the enterprise’s operations.

"The faster a company grows, the more complex its management processes become. While in the past all statistics, reports, and forecasts were handled manually, over time it became clear that Ulyanovsk Oblast Vodokanal urgently needed to implement a modern BI analytics system.

In my view, high-quality BI analytics is vital in any industry, but for the public utilities sector, it is absolutely critical. It is no secret that our industry is chronically underfunded, with the lion’s share of resources going toward emergency maintenance and CAPEX for urgent repairs. This leaves a very tight budget for long-term projects tied to strategic infrastructure overhauls and investment development. Consequently, these funds must be allocated with maximum efficiency. For example, we need to select the most accident-prone sections or those with the highest physical and financial losses for capital overhauls, identify settlements with higher payment collection rates and lower accounts receivable, upgrade fleet and equipment on time, and so forth. In my opinion, under today’s conditions, proper data-driven prioritization is the only way for a utility enterprise to achieve financial sustainability and profitability." Sber’s «Navigator,» a BI and data visualization platform, proved to be the best fit for Ulyanovsk Oblast Vodokanal’s objectives. This solution was pitched to the utility by SberAnalytica, the bank’s subsidiary that develops its own big-data-driven analytical solutions for businesses and the public sector. Given its years of experience interacting with enterprise clients, SberAnalytica’s platform became the most accessible sales channel for Navigator.

The decisive factors in the selection process were, first, that it is domestic software that complies with all security requirements and legal regulations. Second, Navigator is designed specifically for executives and organizational top management.

The project also became a milestone for SberAnalytica: it highlighted that a sector as complex as water supply and wastewater management is in dire need of data systematization. The feedback received from the utility helped craft a solution tailored specifically to the needs of this industry.

Ulyanovsk Oblast Vodokanal began deploying the Navigator BI platform in 2023. According to Alexey Shmyrev, the first step was to prepare the databases. This phase turned out to be the most challenging: the enterprise holds vast amounts of data, but it was fragmented and needed to be standardized into a single format. Staff had to manually extract data from various legacy systems, consolidate it, and eliminate data gaps. While it was an incredibly labor-intensive process, it was absolutely necessary to ensure high-quality BI analytics at output.

Next, the executive team had to choose which specific KPIs to track first. The leadership decided to start with billing and revenue collection metrics. In total, the enterprise manages about 8,000 active customer accounts scattered across the entire Ulyanovsk Oblast. It is essential to continuously monitor how much water an individual consumer uses each month, how that volume fluctuates, and whether they pay on time or accumulate arrears. If utility employees notice that a customer who typically used, say, 10–13 cubic meters ($m^3$) of water per month suddenly drops to just two, it signals a need to investigate the situation immediately to detect potential leaks or meter tampering.

To date, Ulyanovsk Oblast Vodokanal has developed several additional dashboards in Navigator, all tailored for the enterprise’s executive team. Looking ahead, the plan is to build interactive boards for a whole range of other metrics: from operating costs (OPEX) and tariff structures for each settlement to optimizing utility vehicle fleet usage, spare parts procurement, and energy loss tracking.