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Paul Lekan, VP of marketing communications for Aclara, sat down with Water Online Radio for this live interview from the show floor at WEFTEC 2011 in Los Angeles. Aclara provides automatic metering systems and meter data management – information that helps utilities increase performance and revenue. Listen or read on to learn more.

Water Online Radio: Aclara Speaks To The Value Of Information Through Metering

Todd Schnick: We are back, broadcasting live from the Los Angeles Convention Center and the trade show floor for WEFTEC. I am Todd Schnick, joined by my co-host, Todd Youngblood. Todd, we're wrapping up hour five, it's going well so far.

Todd Youngblood: It doesn't seem anything like five hours. This has been so much fun. I thought the crowd would start thinning out as we got into the afternoon, but it's just as busy as it was all day.

Todd Schnick: I think people arrived in town this morning. Wait until you see tomorrow. Tomorrow is going to be fun.

Todd Youngblood: If it's going to be as good as today, I can't wait.

Todd Schnick: Speaking of a nice strong close for hour five, we are joined by the VP of marketing communications for Aclara. Welcome, Paul Lekan.

Paul: Thank you, gentleman.

Todd Schnick: Welcome to Water Online Radio. It's good to have you. Before we get into a conversation, why don't you take a few seconds and tell us about Aclara?

Paul: Sure. Aclara is a company that's rooted in about 15 years of water metering system solution for the potable water industry. Aclara came to be formally four years ago when we brought three technologies together to form a single solution set.

We started in one of the earliest providers of automatic metering systems, water utilities. We moved into meter data management as well as analytics and controls for water utility industries.

Todd Youngblood: Paul, what specific types of problems are you solving for your customers?

Paul: For our customers, it's really about providing information that they need to move into the next phase of providing critical resource to their customers. It's about information. What we provide is essentially the core information to manage the utility and the resources better.

Todd Youngblood: What do you see as the emerging trends and issues in the water/wastewater industry going into 2012?

Paul: I think, with water in particular, it's integration of previously disparate solutions. You're looking at data from a metering stream, for example, or the customer or premise meter. That data was typically read every month or, in some cases, every three or six months. The granularity of the data was very soft.

Solutions that Aclara can give you provide much more granular data – hourly interval data, or even 15 minutes in some cases, bringing it back almost near real-time, and certainly within the same day cycle.

That data provides the utilities a distinct opportunity to really bridge metering data to their system and operation centers to improve their efficiencies.

Todd Youngblood: Paul, typically when I think of integration, I think of getting piece of equipment "A" to play nicely with piece of equipment "B". It sounds like you've taken quite a different approach to that and you're looking at the data produced by piece of equipment "A" and "B".

Paul: That's exactly it. You install a device in the field that operates efficiently. Previously you wanted data to know that it operated efficiently. Now, if you take two pieces of disparate data, join them together and provide analysis, you can actually make better decisions.

For an example, you take metering data as a billing entity, providing better and more accurate bills to the consumer. That's certainly one aspect that's traditional. Now you take that data and start doing things like system balancing with that highly resolute data.

As a water utility, I can now use what was a meter-to-cash transaction and I can pull that data into my operations system and not only look at the flow in my system, but the unintended outflows, the non-intended water loss, and leak detection.

We're seeing our utilities use what used to be strictly a customer meter or billing function, taking that data and applying it in the analytic engine of the operation systems and providing incredible enhancements in the tightness of their systems.

Todd Youngblood: I'm just listening to what you said and I'm trying to figure out what kind of people work for you. You talked about things that an engineer would know, things that an IT professional would know, things that an accountant would know. How do you find people that have that blend of knowledge?

Paul: This was actually my first time at WEF, and I'll tell you, you'll find it's the exact type of people that are here … they just might have a slightly different focus. We are essentially a clear water provider. We don't do a lot of work with wastewater utilities, although many of our customers are a combined system.

You have the environmental-minded people – people who are interested in sustainable resource management. We look for those same types of people. We look for technically advanced engineers, both in hardware and systems and data analytics. Then you look at the business people.

We need good business people to take that and see the value in information and how to brokerage and leverage it to pull a lever in one area to enact change in another area. Then you certainly need the academics. In this industry, whether it's wastewater or clear water, the role of the academic community is very strong, probably more so than the other utilities, electric and gas.

Todd Youngblood: Paul, help the water online audience better understand your value by sharing a recent, specific win that you achieved on behalf of one of your customers.

Paul: We all take satisfaction in working on our products in the field and for their intended purposes. As the systems get installed, for us, there's a win at every customer because we found, in almost every instance, customers take our product and it changes the way they do business internally. Originally, our market leaned heavily towards metering technologies and the meter shops within the utilities.

What we found was, once the meter shop installed the systems, these automatic collection systems and the IT department started supporting them, taking advantage of other solutions like our customer engagement platform, like our meter data management platform. You now have two people at the table that you're talking to during meetings.

All of a sudden, the operations department says, "Hey, that data is great. I need to bring that in." You're starting to see a transformation within the utilities themselves.

That's really the big win for us because, once we start working with a customer, whether it was an initial push to improve the IT infrastructure or the billing department, we always found the table always expands. The big win is making sure we have the ability to support the entire ecosystem within the utility itself.

As we all know, it's change within our own operation that is often the most dramatic. We facilitate that. The outcome, by the way, is the exciting part. The Boston water and sewer department, they've had a system installed for over 10 years now.

They've seen their unintended water loss reduced from the 30 percentile down to 11% on the last figure I saw. You're seeing a real impact on the effective use of a resource that, frankly, we just cannot go without. There is no replacement for water.

Todd Youngblood: Is your geographic target market international or are you strictly in North America?

Paul: We're heavy in North America. We also support the gas and electric industries – water, gas, and electric. We're seeing heavy growth on the electric. You hear the smart grid term quite a bit in the water space.

It's a driver for a lot of network integration, which water utilities are taking advantage of quite a bit. We're seeing the growth in international, but we're very heavy in North America. Big markets appear to be opening up in Central America, Latin America, Mexico, and Brazil.

Todd Youngblood: Paul, you're the marketing communications guy, but I'm interested in your perspective looking at it from the other end of the telescope, so to speak.

You're trying to get information and knowledge out to people. For a guy like me, how would I learn more about how to deal with potable water and the sorts of data collection analysis systems you're talking about?

Paul: I'm here almost strictly to learn. We pride ourselves in paying attention to what the market is telling us, including ancillary markets. This might not be a core market for Aclara at WEF, but the integration of AWWA has worked with WEF and some of the co-sponsored programs that they offer. It just makes sense to pay attention.

We're also dealing with the same infrastructure issues, or the same financing and political issues, on taking systems that are 50, 60, 75, 80, 100 years old and making them operate as efficiently as we need them.

I learn pretty much the same way everyone in this room learns, through dialogue and conversation. One of my customers is actually presenting 50 feet away from here. It's a side of the customer that I've never talked to. They're talking about their asset management system, but it's the same system that we have talked to them about on the clear water side. It's nice to see the knowledge being transferred back and forth between the utilities. Dialogue is where we're going to grow. Dialogue is where we're going to learn.

Todd Youngblood: Paul, we're about out of time, I'm sorry to say. Before we let you go, share with the audience how they can learn more about what you guys are doing and more about your work.

Paul: You can check us out online at www.aclara.com.

Todd Schnick: Paul, it was a pleasure to have you. Thank you for joining us today.

Paul: Thank you, gentlemen.