Facility Data Management with WIMS or Rio
From source water through to the receiving environment, our interconnected data management platforms, Rio and WIMS, empower utilities and industries of all sizes to acquire, process, store, and share water quality and wastewater information for better, faster decision making.
According to a Black & Veatch 2021 Strategic Survey, the core issues facing utilities today include aging infrastructure, system resilience, and managing capital costs. Faced with growing challenges and untapped opportunities, the drive to accelerate innovation in strategy and operations is more critical than ever. This forces utilities to unlock the hidden value of data within systems and operations by achieving a complete view of your facility to see the relationship between data and discover contextual insights to inform more meaningful improvements.
But even as utilities become increasingly data rich, only 5% of utilities are describing their data management systems as robust and fully integrated. By creating a single source of truth, you achieve deeper insights to fuel decision-making and optimize resource allocation across areas like process, maintenance, chemical dosing, and energy. Better cost-effectiveness in-turn creates opportunities to invest in new areas, while having confidence in your team’s efficiency, your plant’s maintenance planning, and predictable performance to manage your costs and compliance.
Whether it's through on-premise or cloud-based software, drinking water and wastewater facilities benefit immensely by having a solution in place to unify their organization's data for streamlining decision-making and operations.
The Partnership Between Hach & Aquatic Informatics
The products within the Hach Data Management Solutions Portfolio, including WIMS (Water Information Management Solution) and Claros Collect, have been centralized at Aquatic Informatics along with their existing product, WaterTrax and the new Rio product, to leverage Aquatic Informatics’ experience as a world-class provider of water data management software and cloud solutions to support our customers in their data management journeys.
Hach WIMS will now be known simply as WIMS, while Rio, formerly known as Aquatic Compliance & Operations, is the new software solution that takes the place of Claros Collect when paired with WIMS as a mobile field operations application. Using secure cloud infrastructure, Rio provides operators with visibility and access to action Lab, SCADA, field, and other data sources from any device. By centralizing operations and compliance within an online environment water operators can track critical metrics, visualize trends, and use customizable alerts to proactively address problems. Rio produces regulatory reports for both drinking and waste water utilities including Net Discharge Monitoring, Monthly Operating, Surface Water Treatment Rule, Disinfection Byproducts, and Distribution Bacteriological Reports. All reports and data are retained and encrypted, creating a defensible, easily accessible repository.
The Value of WIMS – Formerly known as Hach WIMS
WIMS is a water information data management system that unifies data from across your drinking water and wastewater systems to maximize time and resources on-premise or online.
With a legacy spanning more than 20 years, there is a reason that WIMS is the gold standard of data management solutions in the water sector.
Ideal for large sized utilities and agencies that need to combine field, process, lab and other data, WIMS provides a complete picture by streamlining workflows for easy water and wastewater analysis integrated by SCADA, LIMS, and more. The software's versatility and feature-rich portfolio makes it the leading choice among the private and public sectors for drinking water and wastewater compliance.
WIMS will flag problems, so you know exactly what happened and where the issue occurred. Leverage built-in analysis tools for statistical correlations, probabilities, year-over-year, histograms, and Statistical Process Control Calculations.
The Value of Rio
Regulatory Compliance & Operational Data Management collects your data from lab, process, and field into one secure location to increase your facility’s efficiency and reduce liability. Our latest generation data management solution, Rio, was developed in partnership with Hach to maximize the value of data from Hach instruments and serve as a central place to integrate any data source.
Rio is ideal for small to medium sized drinking water or wastewater facilities processing less than 5 million gallons per day (MGDs) that need to improve compliance & operations and perform remote field work.
Our latest solution is entirely cloud-based, so there is no need for an on-premise instance, which saves on IT labor and provides an extra layer of protection from data loss due to catastrophic events or human error.
Data Management Comparison Breakdown:
But what are the core differences between WIMS & Rio? Our sales team are experts in determining the best solution for meeting a facility's needs, but for a breakdown of the key differences, check out the comparison chart below:
- Data Hosting: Rio is a cloud-based software solution, whereas WIMS is on-prem.
- Ease of use: As noted in our Modernization Guide [Link], ease of use can be a major contributing factor to onboarding, engagement, and knowledge transfer. While both Rio & WIMS are user friendly, Rio’s user experience & UI are more modern and minimalist. Those familiar and comfortable working with Excel spreadsheets or Google Sheets will find it easy to pick up either software.
- Mobile Data Collection: Leverage the Rio mobile app on its own or with WIMS for remote data collection, data validation to reduce errors, and access to information for more efficient field operations. Click here for a full overview of how Rio can optimize facility dispatching.
- Dashboards & Alerts: Transforming Data into Action: While WIMS’s dashboards and analysis are more robust, both products provide key insights a flag issues automatically, and status updates for understanding facility health & optimization opportunities at-a-glance.
- Audit trails & reporting: WIMS stands apart for advanced calculations and robust functionality, making it the ideal choice for large facilities. Having decades of development investment, it comes out of the box with built-in analysis tools for statistical correlations, probabilities, year-over-year, histograms, and Statistical Process Control Calculations.
Ultimately, both solutions have functionalities that will meet the needs of small to medium facilities, with their proven ability to track critical metrics, produce regulatory reports (NetDMR, MORs, etc), and use customizable alerts to proactively address problems. To learn more about which solution is the best fit for your facility, click here to get in touch with a sales representative who can guide you through the process directly, taking into account your facility's unique needs and challenges.
Continue Learning
Stronger Together: The Benefits of WIMS + Rio
Compound WIMS’s robust scalability, built-in equations, and advanced reporting features with Rio’s mobile data collection app and you can unlock even greater efficiencies and optimized operations for proactive monitoring.
The future of your organization’s data management is within your reach, let WIMS and Rio give you the confidence to let the data lead your utility.
Check out our Rio solution showcase, or schedule a personalized demo for WIMS or Rio to walk through the product with one of our product experts.
