Digital Foundations in the Non-Household Water Market
When the English non-household (NHH) water market opened in 2017, the ambition was clear: drive competition, improve customer service, and create a market where innovation thrives.
Yet, eight years on, the market remains constrained by a familiar challenge — data.
Retailers and wholesalers continue to wrestle with data accuracy, incomplete transactions, and manual interventions that erode efficiency. The result is a market that spends too much time reconciling spreadsheets and not enough time creating value.
The problem isn’t intent; it’s infrastructure.
Digital foundations are weak — and without them, transformation remains theoretical.
1. The Data Quality Dilemma
Every retailer knows the frustration of settlement mismatches, missing reads, and erroneous meter data. The root cause? A patchwork of legacy systems, inconsistent data governance, and siloed processes between retailers, wholesalers, and MOSL’s central market operating system (CMOS).
The market’s performance improvement efforts have helped, but the underlying problem persists: data is still treated as a by-product, not a business asset.
Without a strong data foundation:
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Retailers can’t bill accurately.
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Wholesalers can’t plan effectively.
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Customers lose trust in the market’s reliability.
The way forward is to treat data management as core operations, not an afterthought.
2. Integration: The Missing Link
Many retailers and wholesalers still rely on semi-manual uploads, flat-file transfers, and periodic reconciliations. These are symptoms of disconnected systems — where CRM, billing, and CMOS interfaces operate in isolation.
A digitally mature retailer doesn’t just send transactions to CMOS; it integrates with it.
Modern API-driven architectures enable real-time validation, error detection, and automatic updates. This means exceptions can be managed proactively, rather than discovered months later during settlement runs.
Integration should not be a technical luxury — it’s an operational necessity.
3. The Rise of the Single View
In the competitive market, insight is power. A single view of the customer, contract, and consumption enables faster resolution, transparent billing, and better decision-making.
Yet for many retailers, the customer journey is fragmented across multiple platforms — CRM, billing, settlement, and wholesale interfaces. The result? Duplicated effort, inconsistent messaging, and delayed responses.
A true digital foundation brings these together into a SingleView — an integrated data and process layer that connects every aspect of retail operations.
From contact to cash, every interaction should be traceable, reconciled, and visible.
When this is achieved, customer service stops being reactive and becomes insight-driven.
4. Automating Reconciliation and Settlement
The settlement process remains one of the most resource-intensive areas of NHH retailing. Each market run (R1, R2, R3, RF) exposes billing variances that must be manually investigated and resolved.
But with the right data architecture, automation can handle 80–90% of this workload.
Automated reconciliation engines can:
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Match billing and CMOS data at transaction level.
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Flag discrepancies instantly, rather than post-run.
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Generate insight on systemic issues by wholesaler, region, or meter type.
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Feed corrected data back into billing or reporting systems.
Automation not only saves time — it protects margin and ensures compliance.
5. Digital Resilience and the Role of Cloud
Legacy hosting and on-premise infrastructure limit flexibility.
Modern water retailers are embracing cloud-native solutions that scale with demand, improve data security, and simplify integration with CMOS and third-party tools.
Key benefits include:
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Seamless patching and upgrades.
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Improved uptime and business continuity.
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Easier regulatory reporting and audit trails.
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Lower total cost of ownership through service consolidation.
Cloud is not just about hosting — it’s about enabling a digitally resilient enterprise.
6. Data Governance as Market Strategy
Strong data governance isn’t compliance theatre; it’s competitive advantage.
Retailers that invest in governance frameworks — including data ownership, quality rules, and stewardship — build operational confidence and regulator trust.
An effective governance framework should define:
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Who owns which data assets
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How quality is measured, monitored, and improved
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How changes propagate through systems and market interfaces
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How insight is fed back into decision-making
Good governance builds a bridge between business ambition and data reality.
7. Collaborative Transformation
Digital transformation in the NHH market can’t happen in isolation. Retailers, wholesalers, MOSL, and solution providers need to collaborate on shared standards, open APIs, and transparent data models.
Market improvement programmes are moving in the right direction — but progress will depend on how well digital initiatives align across parties.
This is less about competition and more about co-evolution.
When data moves seamlessly between systems, the market as a whole becomes more efficient — and everyone benefits.
8. The Path Forward: Building Digital Foundations
A truly digital retailer in the NHH water market will have:
✅ A unified data model linking customer, meter, and market data
✅ API-led integration with CMOS and wholesale systems
✅ Automated reconciliation and validation workflows
✅ A customer-first design philosophy anchored in transparency
✅ Governance that embeds continuous data improvement
With those foundations in place, everything else — customer experience, operational efficiency, and regulatory confidence — follows naturally.
Final Thought
The NHH water market doesn’t lack ambition; it lacks digital stability.
The future won’t be won by the largest retailer or the lowest margin — it’ll be won by those who build strong, intelligent, and connected digital foundations.
The next stage of market maturity won’t come from competition alone — it’ll come from collaboration through data and design.
