Automation that pays twice: Altis MDS reinvents saved hours as new client improvements

When Altis’ Managed Data Services (MDS) automated a critical reporting process, they eliminated a major labour burden for a large utilities provider. It freed up hundreds of engineering hours, which were all reinvested into delivering additional improvements for the client, saving costs and improving efficiency.

The team was originally engaged to manage some of the client’s critical data platforms. This included a requirement to provide regular health and status updates on key processes to internal stakeholders, a task performed manually several times per day.

Altis’ MDS team developed an automated monitoring system that performs these checks and distributes reports automatically. This reduced a three-hour daily task to just ten minutes, saving around 700 hours per year – time the team reinvested in enhancing the client’s broader data environment.

They then significantly improved the efficiency with which the client handles large data updates across its systems. By re-engineering six core processes and optimising their performance, tasks that took two hours and 15 minutes now take just nine minutes. This represents a 96 per cent improvement that saves the client 750 hours annually. As a result, the client benefits from substantial cost savings and much faster access to critical data.

Altis Chief Commercial Officer Katrina Pilcher said the project demonstrated how MDS often delivers far more value than initially anticipated, once automation frees the team to tackle deeper system issues.

“That’s the real power of MDS. When you free your data experts from repetitive manual work, they can refocus that time into high-value problem solving that delivers greater impact for the client.” Pilcher said.

Pilcher said the MDS team also delivered a separate optimisation project to address database inefficiencies caused by oversized column definitions. This achieved a 98 per cent reduction in size, delivering improved performance, lowering storage costs, and simplifying future maintenance.

“Optimisation projects like this deliver meaningful, lasting improvements. Once you reduce unnecessary processing and streamline the underlying architecture, everything becomes faster, cheaper and easier to maintain,” Pilcher said.

A growing demand for smarter data management

Pilcher said many organisations were struggling with the cost and complexity of maintaining modern data environments, with platform performance degradation and recurring issues common pain points.

“Data now lives across multiple platforms and applications. Keeping everything running reliably, securely and cost effectively requires 24/7 monitoring and deep technical skills that many internal teams either don’t have or can’t afford to scale.”

“The MDS model gives clients access to skilled data engineers, database administrators and cloud specialists, without the significant overhead of maintaining those capabilities in-house.”

“Our role is to prevent issues before they impact the business. We focus on resolving root causes, not just restoring service – and by doing that, we deliver long-term stability”.

“A major advantage of MDS is the amount of processing time we’re able to return to a client’s business. When key tasks run in minutes instead of hours, the cost and productivity benefits compound rapidly.”

She said increasing expectations around data security, compliance and AI were also driving uptake.

“With AI and advanced analytics, data needs to be clean, integrated and accessible in real time. MDS ensures the underlying infrastructure is reliable enough to support those capabilities - and that organisations can adopt them with confidence.”