Loudoun Water operates in one of the most demanding service territories in the country. Northern Virginia’s economic engine is fueled by data centers, technology firms, and a fast-growing residential community — all of which set a high bar for digital service.
Meeting that bar has required this water utility to modernize steadily, replacing legacy applications with systems designed for speed, security, and scalability.
SAP ECC’s end-of-life support in 2027 accelerated that momentum. Loudoun Water faced a choice: carry forward familiar but aging systems or use the moment to establish a cloud-based foundation that could support customer operations for the next decade. The utility’s SaaS-first strategy proved to be the right way forward, moving applications to the cloud to cut technical debt, manage costs, and keep pace with its fast-growing service area.
“A SaaS-driven, fit-to-standard approach backed by strong executive sponsorship and business engagement sets the foundation for a successful transformation and ongoing innovation,” explained Lara Bowers, IT Program and Supplier Manager, in a recent interview with ASUG ahead of speaking at the SAP for Utilities, Presented by ASUG conference in Denver (register for the session here).
As Tony Foreman, Solutions Manager at Loudoun Water, also noted, the utility has spent more than a decade positioning itself as a technology leader despite its midsize scale, often becoming the first utility to adopt new SAP solutions. SAP Service Cloud 2.0 is just the latest example of that approach.
Customer experience became the focal point of the decision to implement SAP Service Cloud 2.0. Replicating SAP IC WebClient, the long-standing interface for customer service agents, would have preserved the status quo. But embracing Service Cloud 2.0 promised a transformation in usability, extensibility, and integration with SAP S/4HANA.
Still, this was at the time an untested product, and choosing it meant assuming the risk of going first. “We were the first utility in North America to go live on a product that’s not fully baked out by SAP,” Foreman said. The decision was deliberate, intended not only to position Loudoun Water ahead of its peers but also to influence SAP’s roadmap through direct engagement.
A Calculated Leap
Before committing to Service Cloud 2.0 (amid modernizing its ERP system with SAP S/4HANA, via RISE with SAP), Loudoun Water and its application maintenance vendor, Utegration, ran a structured yearlong assessment to inventory the “as-is,” pinpoint gaps, and decide what to improve. This exercise confirmed where end users were already satisfied and where targeted change would matter.
Specifically related to Loudoun's CX platform decision, the team examined the product trajectory and compared it to their needs. At first, embedded CRM looked like a logical path, but Foreman questioned whether it would be worth the effort: “Are we going to be happy with putting in the effort that it's going to take to implement a project of this size and have essentially the same thing that we already have today?” he asked. “And the answer from that was no. We would like to see something new. We would like to see something improved.”
His perspective helped tip the balance toward SAP Service Cloud 2.0. “80% of what the product roadmap offered met 90% of our existing business needs,” Foreman said; this gave them confidence to move ahead while planning for iterative delivery.
The program structure reflected both ambition and risk management. The team chose a big-bang delivery, combining a brownfield move to SAP S/4HANA with two greenfield projects: Service Cloud 2.0 for customer operations and SuccessFactors for HR and time entry.
Loudoun's team kept the scope tight, retiring or migrating smaller systems ahead of time to create a cleaner foundation for the transition. Foreman argued that phasing made little sense given the tight CX–S/4 integration, adding that the big-bang approach ultimately proved more cost-effective as well.
Delivery emphasized early business involvement and repeated validation. The team ran three full rounds of user acceptance testing, and SAP prioritized day-one issues based on that feedback. Collaboration became a defining theme. “If we take the risk, they will make themselves more available than you would ever typically expect, to have that level of involvement,” Foreman said.
That posture carried through implementation and into stabilization. Loudoun Water, SAP, and Deloitte engaged “hand-in-hand, side-by-side,” supported by rigorous testing and constant coordination.
Results on Day One
Go-live took place on April 2. The cutover represented a true “big-bang” — S/4HANA, Service Cloud 2.0, and SuccessFactors all went live simultaneously. What stood out most was not the scale of the change, but how steady operations felt once the switch was complete.
“It was definitely unusual going live and feeling like business as usual,” Foreman recalled. “Day one, customer service was taking phone calls. So in our first month post-go-live, we handled almost 3,000 calls. Our average call handling time was stable through day one of post-go-live. And we've been performing move-ins and all of our normal processes in Service Cloud 2.0 since day one seamlessly,” noted Bowers, underscoring the breadth of continuity across both customer-facing and internal operations.
Beyond the call center, Loudoun Water processed thousands of work orders, invoices, timesheets, and payments through all channels on day one.
For the customer service team, the most noteworthy difference showed up in onboarding and training. Under the old IC WebClient interface, agents often needed a month before they were comfortable handling calls independently. Service Cloud 2.0 streamlined that curve dramatically.
With a five-day training window, agents “were essentially training themselves by day three,” Foreman said. By the end of the week, they were confident and ready to handle customers. The usability of the new system translated directly into faster time-to-competency and higher confidence on the phones.
Not every challenge disappeared. First-mover status meant that Loudoun Water encountered rough edges where product maturity had not yet caught up. Infrastructure support under RISE also introduced new learning curves, particularly in how issues were ticketed and routed through SAP. Those lessons became part of an ongoing partnership model, with Loudoun Water, SAP, and Deloitte jointly refining processes and coordinating priorities release by release.
Lessons for the Next Wave
For peers considering their own move to S/4HANA and Service Cloud 2.0, Loudoun Water’s leaders are clear: scope discipline and business ownership make the difference. Foreman advised against layering in unnecessary complexity at the start, emphasizing that the team only pursued what directly supported the customer experience and internal operations.
Executive sponsorship was another differentiator, he added, recalling that whenever the team needed support, leadership’s only question was, “How fast do you need it?” That level of commitment ensured momentum never stalled.
The program also validated the importance of engaging business users early and often. Multiple rounds of UAT helped employees gain confidence before go-live, while internal communications framed the shift in terms that resonated locally. “We led all the communications, we know our organization best and how people learn and receive information. We owned change management through our learning manager and subject matter experts” Bowers said.
Another lesson is that big-bang delivery can be effective when CX and S/4HANA are tightly integrated. Phasing the programs, Foreman noted, would have risked duplication of effort and left uncertainty about end-to-end process behavior. By committing to a single cutover, the utility avoided prolonged disruption and quickly stabilized operations.
Looking ahead, Loudoun Water expects its role as an early adopter to continue shaping how SAP rolls out Service Cloud 2.0 to utilities more broadly. “My key message that I want to close with is that people and partnerships really matter,” stressed Bowers. The partnership model established during implementation will remain critical as new releases are delivered and the product matures.