Recently, I sat down with Steve Brescia, Manager of Enterprise Architecture at American Water to discuss the company’s unified communication and collaboration strategy, With approximately 7,000 employees in 300 locations in 30 states and parts of Canada, the company has made its ‘single pane of glass’ UCC strategy one of their top business priorities.  Why? Steve explains:

“Number one is to eliminate a wasteful duplication of efforts.  We don’t want to reinvent the wheel.  There are good ideas going on all around the
company, and we want to be able to identify those and build a robust knowledge base so we can house those in a place that’s accessible by the entire organization.

“We want to be able to drive efficiencies through the interactions across groups, not only across geographies but across groups within states or within lines of business.

“And then third, we want to be able to provide effective and cost efficient solutions to our customers that not only benefit our customers but also benefit American Water.  And that’s always with an eye on our capital and operating expenses.”

Listen to this Webcast to hear Steve talk about American Water’s particular collaboration challenges and what impact their UCC strategy has on a wide range of projects, from assembling an RFP for a new water or wastewater system to capital improvements projects and giving people mobile access to tools and information.

Thank you, Steve, for the insights!