After successfully founding and selling an enterprise software firm, Peter Carlson, Chris Manchuck, and Chris Spain carefully contemplated what to do next. They wanted to combine their technological prowess with a socially conscious endeavor, so they decided to focus on water end use, the previously unnoticed last mile in the water network. In 2002, they established HydroPoint Data Systems, an enterprise smart water management company.
HydroPoint helps eliminate water waste on municipal, educational, community, and commercial properties. The organization works with customers to understand how they use water and identify where it is being mismanaged.
Since every site utilizes water in some capacity, water waste is always a possibility — and HydroPoint discovered that almost all sites have elevated water use due to leaks, breaks, and overwatering. The HydroPoint team helps identify a site’s optimal water use, saving them money, water, time, and even energy.
HydroPoint’s solutions are beneficial for an organization’s bottom line as well as the environment, producing outcomes that are both economically and environmentally sustainable.
Changing How We Use Water
Companies have always been burdened by high water costs and penalties for water waste, but we’re now in a time where people and businesses are much more aware of their impact on the environment than when HydroPoint first began. As a result, HydroPoint is experiencing a sharp increase in demand for their technology and they are well-positioned to assist, since few other businesses are concentrated solely on water end-use. It’s a complicated aspect of the water sector because every vertical and site uses — and wastes — water quite differently. HydroPoint is a solutions-based business that is adept at delivering the precise results that its clients require.
HydroPoint has explored everything from artificial intelligence to cutting-edge wireless communications, and they are continually looking for ways to improve their processes and lower costs for their clients. Low-cost flow sensors are currently the most innovative technology; without the information provided by these sensors, HydroPoint would be unable to cure its customers’ water blindness. Technology is important, but humans also play a crucial role in the business. HydroPoint’s team is driven, enthusiastic, and “walks the talk”; they are responsible for the company’s success.
Enterprise Smart Water Management Technology
HydroPoint’s smart irrigation and water use analytics solutions help businesses maximize water savings, lower operating expenses, reduce business risks, and achieve sustainability goals. They combine IoT technology, data analytics, and automation to optimize irrigation, flow management, and leak detection — all of which deliver water visibility and control to commercial, municipal, education, and community sites.
What Makes HydroPoint Different
HydroPoint stands out from the competition because they truly partner with their customers instead of viewing their business as merely transactional. Customers receive thorough onboarding, training, and outstanding customer support from HydroPoint, long after the products have been sold. The organization has also worked with some of the most prestigious sites and properties in the nation and has more than 20 years of experience. Their products help customers save money, water, and time, and customers usually experience an ROI of less than three years.
This is exemplified by Lowe’s, which wanted to improve operational efficiency and lessen its environmental impact. They deployed HydroPoint’s WeatherTRAK smart irrigation controllers at 939 of their locations to achieve these objectives. Lowe’s now saves an estimated $5 million annually in overall water costs and 650 million gallons of water annually.
Additionally, Wendy’s wanted to conserve water, cut operating costs, and minimize brand damage risks. They installed HydroPoint’s WeatherTRAK smart irrigation controllers and WaterCompass water use analytics services at a few of their locations and have since witnessed a 50% decrease in irrigation water use after deploying these systems — saving more than one million gallons of water in 2021 alone.
Another example is a retail shopping center in the San Francisco Bay Area that installed HydroPoint’s WaterCompass leak detection and water use analytics service. This uncovered that a significant amount of water was being used somewhere in the mall at night when none should have been running. Together with the onsite team, the HydroPoint team found that a frozen yogurt machine in the food court was pouring 600 gallons of water per hour down a drain. The mall saved $172,828 in operating costs and 2.6 million gallons of water annually by identifying and fixing this issue.
The three main reasons why customers utilize HydroPoint’s smart irrigation and leak detection technologies are to save money, water, and time. These three key areas of savings are constant, although the use cases and results change depending on the requirements of each customer and which of HydroPoint’s solutions they’re using. HydroPoint’s customer experience approach emphasizes honesty, integrity, and treating people how they want to be treated. If the business ever makes a mistake, they are upfront about it, repair it, and ensure that it doesn’t happen again.
Looking to the Future
HydroPoint will continue to enhance and broaden the scope of its current product lines to keep them cutting-edge and beneficial to clients — as well as continue to innovate and release new solutions. They also have an exciting new product in the works that will elevate what they currently offer and revolutionize how they conduct business.
HydroPoint is using enterprise water management technology to make a truly positive impact. So much technology creates negative impacts on people and on the planet, but HydroPoint’s solutions are beneficial for both. That’s what they are passionate about and what keeps them going — conserving the world’s most precious natural resource: water — and bringing significant savings to their partners in the process.
