Sydney Water dives into digital transformation

Senior IT executive Aron Calfas leads digitalization initiatives to deliver value and world-class services

Access to safe, clean drinking water straight from the tap is a modern privilege often taken for granted. And behind that simple amenity is your local water utility – an organization faced with a variety of challenges, including changing customer expectations, climate change, and digital disruption. Its job is to maintain the luxury we all enjoy by keeping the water flowing. One such organization is Sydney Water, Australia’s largest water utility, supplying services to more than 5 million people in the Greater Sydney Area.

Aron Calfas, head of digital risk and strategic assurance, is the leader of Sydney Water’s ten-year digitalization plan, with a mandate to achieve a modern and connected digital organization that delivers efficient, reliable, world-class service to its customers. The mandate is to drive the digitalization agenda that underpins and enables the Sydney Water strategy.

“The industry is shifting to digitalization, which is, in essence, about moving towards a business model that leverages technology to enhance customer experience, improve operational efficiencies, and interoperate with partners,” Calfas said.

“Being able to have a partner like Info-Tech who is willing to step in and provide you with services that can give you and your team an outcome that you know is trusted is a financial benefit to any organization.”

– Aron Calfas, Head of Digital Risk and Assurance, Sydney Water

Digitalization is holistic, encompassing technology, processes, data, and people

Sydney Water is planning a comprehensive digitalization transformation. “Our plan is to empower our customer through assets that inform us how they are performing, driven by intelligent data and analytics in a hybrid cloud environment,” Calfas said. “We will shift from reactive, dispersed information sets to trusted, centralized, managed data that is accessible and useable by our people to make intelligent decisions.”

In a public-facing utility, the customer is never far from mind, and Sydney Water has embraced intuitive ways to interact with, and gain insight into, its customer base.

Looking inward, digitalization also touches the employee experience, not only with technology such as employee-centric platforms, but also with a strong push toward digital and data literacy.

The Info-Tech advantage: Robust tools, trusted partner

Mindful of the scope of the work ahead, Calfas brought in Info-Tech as a guide and partner to review and validate the planned ten-year strategy and offer valuable clarity as the plan unfolds: “We worked with Info-Tech experts to ensure that not just our approach but the foundation of the pillars was sound as well.”

Calfas was appreciative of Info-Tech resources, particularly the company’s tools, such as IT diagnostics, IT Spend and Staffing Benchmarking, key metrics dashboards, and others, to assess the current state of the IT environment and identify areas for improvement. “Ultimately, it helped us build the plan, structure the plan, make sure that the plan was sound and reasonable, and then to benchmark that plan,” Calfas said.

“I can leverage the trust that I have in the collaborative approach that I have with Info-Tech to really allow them to work with my team. I don't have to always be there.”

– Aron Calfas, Head of Digital Risk and Assurance, Sydney Water

Boosting the bottom line

The benefits so far are notable. Sydney Water has saved money and improved negotiation for services by identifying cost-savings opportunities from optimizing IT processes, improving staff efficiency, and more. Calfas draws a direct line from those bottom-line benefits to Info-Tech’s expertise.

“Being able to have a partner like Info-Tech who is willing to step in, provide you with services that can give you and your team an outcome, that you know is trusted, is a financial benefit to any organization,” Calfas said. “The advice is of value and comes from intelligent, capable, skilled individuals.”

Upskilling employees for a digital workplace

Boosting the organization’s self-knowledge has allowed a finer comparison against industry peers, and newly upskilled employees report better satisfaction and performance.

And, more generally, it was Info-Tech experts’ accessibility and seamless integration during the partnership – not only for himself but for other members of his team as well – that stood out the most to Calfas. “I can leverage the trust that I have in the collaborative approach that I have with Info-Tech to really allow them to work with my team. I don't have to always be there.”

Building a digital future

Sydney Water’s digital transformation ambitions are wide-ranging, with the goal of becoming a truly intelligent utility that offers world-class service to its customers. Calfas intends to continue to leverage Info-Tech expertise to help enable the utility’s strategy over the coming years: “Whether it's AI, quantum, robotics, or new adoptable trends, we will be working together to really drive forward that relentless pursuit of our digital intent.”