Another new and critical person will be Water Manager or Water Manager Assistant. There will be one Water Manager and one Water Manager Assistant for the two SmartTap sites in Kananga. In theory, I think the Water Manager and Water Manager Assistant can effectively manage many SmartTap sites once the Water Sellers are fully trained and comfortable with the SmartTap app.
There are two critical functions for the Water Manager and his assistant is to collect usage data from each SmartTap dispenser. And they have to manage the water credits and water sales of Water Sellers.
Lorentz is developing a newer SmartTap dispenser with GSM (Global System for Mobile) communication capability. Without this capability, the Water Manager will have to physically visit each site to collect the data via Bluetooth connectivity from the SmartTap dispenser. The SmartTap dispenser is capable of storing up to 10 years of data. But with the GSM capable SmartTap dispenser, data would be forwarded directly to the Cloud on a near real-time basis. The SmartTap dispenser logs each transaction by customer id and tag, liters received, time of day, and date. From this data, SmartTap utilization can be analyzed and improved. For example, if most customers are coming in the early morning or late evening, then the tariff can be adjusted to encourage customers to come during mid-day happy hours when more water is available. Also, if the SmartTap dispenser is heavily used throughout most of the daylight hours, then an additional SmartTap dispenser could be installed.
The Water Manager and Water Manager Assistant can, if necessary, issue and redeem water credit on the internet. However, some Water Sellers may not enable the mobile data capability of their smartphone. Or they may prefer to handle the getting of water credit in-person. Since the Water Manager or Water Manager Assistant will have to physically visit the SmartTap dispenser periodically to collect data, water credit business can be handled in-person if they coordinate a schedule day and time. Of course, in-person visit would be encouraged during the beginning months of operation because the Water Seller may have some important insights on the operation of the SmartTap dispenser or SmartTap app. And this face-to-face meeting can be used to review training and procedures. Finally at some point time after operations are functioning well, the required physical visit schedule will have to be specified to retrieve the data from the SmartTap dispenser.
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