GF Piping Systems tackles social and environmental challenges using Microsoft Azure services

“Our primary focus is to help our customers solve environmental, social and governance challenges. By adding cloud technology to the mix, we’re now able to support businesses to lower costs, protect citizens and be more sustainable.”

Oliver Bettrich, Head of Digital Transformation at GF Piping Systems, is explaining the key priorities for the international industrial corporation based in Switzerland, and the solution that’s making them happen. 

“For many years our focus has been on helping businesses to provide safe water,” he says, “but more recently, we’ve been looking at taking things to the next level.

“We want to offer better solutions to connect resources, people and technology and to do this, we need to digitalize our services.”

So, GF Piping Systems has partnered with Microsoft to build a one-stop-shop platform using cloud technology. “Typically, people don't notice a piping system until it leaks,” Bettrich adds, “but our new customer-centric platform provides solutions that make a visible impact to both business and society.”

A 220-year-old company sets their sights on digitalization

GF Piping Systems is a division of global organization Georg Fischer, which was founded in 1802. It has sales companies in 31 countries and production sites in 36 locations, across America, Europe, and Asia ensuring a quick and reliable service for its customers. 

“As the leading flow solution provider for the safe preservation and transportation of fluid resources,” explains Bettrich, “the division provides industry-leading, leak-free piping solutions to customers such as hospitals, residential buildings, industrial sites and general utility.” 

Providing sustainable water solutions is vital. Today, a third of the global population experience severe water scarcity for at least one month per year and 33% of the world’s drinking water is lost as a result of network leaks, representing a $14 billion annual revenue loss.

“Sustainability is at the center of everything we do,” explains Nina Pongracz, Global Communication Manager for Sustainability at GF Piping Systems. “Despite this, we’re still a traditional company whose legacy is in making physical engineering plastic products and in order to keep improving, we know that we need to transform our operations. 

“We want to digitalize and better serve our customers – which is why we partnered with Microsoft.”

The company builds a partnership and a platform

Before turning to Microsoft, GF Piping Systems offered businesses singular applications, and marketed their products using traditional methods such as flyers, exhibitions and website-based communications. 

But a few years ago, the company saw an opportunity to improve both its marketing techniques and the range of products it serves. 

“We wanted to market our products to a larger customer base and provide multiple applications within a centralized platform that enabled remote monitoring and predictive maintenance of our products,” says Stephan Koern, Head of Digital Enterprise Architecture at GF Piping Systems. 

“To do this, we kicked off a series of workshops and discussions with Microsoft that led us to Microsoft Azure PaaS.

This, he says, helped them to create a flexible, modular platform environment to build business applications and provide reusable capabilities using a cloud infrastructure.

“As a team, we have an abundance of experience between us,” says Koern, “but having the support of Microsoft FastTrack and Microsoft experts was vital in filling any skill gaps and getting this environment built in just six months.”

Building in the cloud proves to be beneficial

The new platform – the CONNECT Hub – has been a huge success. “Using Microsoft Azure DevOps, we can build, test and deploy applications quickly reducing time-to-market at a low cost,” says Koern.

On the platform, GF Piping Systems uses Microsoft Azure Kubernetes Services to develop and deploy a range of cloud-native apps. “For us, this platform is a sales enabler,” says Koern. “We can roll out applications within hours. The average staging release is under two hours, and we’ve seen a migration of 18 environments to a new subscription model takes just two weeks. We’re now much quicker at showing customers how we can solve problems because we already have the building blocks available to develop customized solutions. This is helping to reach to new business segments.

“We originally worked with distributors, whose insights were less customer-focused,” explains Bettrich. “Now we work directly with end users so we can better meet their needs, achieving customer centricity.”

The platform also enables GF Piping Systems to collect and analyze data, allowing them to explore new ways of thinking. “Having an abundance of data at our disposal means that we can provide insights and recommendations to customers so they can make better organizational decisions,” he says.

"We can rollout our applications to other regions within hours, the average staging release is under 2 hours and a migration of 18 environments to a new subscription model took just two weeks."

Looking towards a more sustainable future

From enabling customers to have a smaller carbon footprint, to protecting people from dangerous legionella in piping systems, the CONNECT Hub has proved a vital component for GF Piping Systems in supporting customers to meet sustainability targets and solve environmental and social challenges.

“One particular use case within CONNECT Hub,” begins Arnaud Andreolli, Product Manager at Hycleen Automation Systems, “is our Hycleen CONNECT which transforms our Hycleen Automation System into a digital solution. We created a digital enabled solution that provides clean water and enables our customers to address the most basic need for water and sanitation, protecting people – especially those who are vulnerable – from sickness.”

High-value solutions like this fit perfectly with GF Piping Systems’ strategy for growing and increasing global collaboration and customer proximity. “In the future, we want to create even more value and increase the business capabilities of the CONNECT Hub,” says Bettrich. “We have a couple of exciting projects digitalizing more of our existing services in the pipeline.

“By building strong connections between people, technology and resources, we’re creating solutions that are efficiently improving people’s day-to-day lives and driving towards a better, more sustainable tomorrow.”