Introducing Productboard Pulse. Exec-level insights into what your customers need, powered by AI.
2016
North America
Courtney Arnott
Director of Product & Solutions
Born in response to the Flint, Michigan water crisis, 120Water seeks to ensure safe drinking water across the United States. The digital water company offers a comprehensive platform that includes six software applications, physical products like sampling kits, and water quality services. A major focus of 120Water’s work is supporting water systems’ compliance with the Lead and Copper Rule Revisions (LCRR), a federal initiative aimed at reducing dangerous contaminants like lead in drinking water systems.
This 10-year compliance initiative is a major step toward improving public health and delivering safe drinking water to communities nationwide.
The LCRR requires water systems to submit an inventory of service lines, notify customers of any dangerous lines, and replace them. This is a long and complex journey for every water system in the country. “Every single water system in the nation is required to do an inventory submission this year... This is really the first step into getting the lead out of the ground and public health back to a stable place,” explains Courtney Arnott, Director of Product & Solutions at 120Water.
While the LCRR is a federal mandate, states can customize how they implement the regulations. 120Water needed to adapt its platform to meet different state requirements. Unfortunately, many of 120Water’s customers were still reliant on Excel spreadsheets and outdated technology, making the transition to advanced digital tools a significant challenge. Explaining the tech adoption gap, Courtney adds, “We’re introducing technology to a user base that isn’t used to it... transitioning from Microsoft Word and Excel to a Google Docs world.”
120Water also had to ensure alignment among water systems, state agencies, and end consumers, each with their own unique needs and requirements. Stakeholder progress was difficult to keep track of when 120Water’s product team managed all product-related requests through a ticketing system, leading to disconnected information and process bottlenecks.
120Water chose Productboard as a key tool to tackle these challenges and have a more strategic and organized approach to their product development process.
The Insights feature in Productboard served as a centralized inbox for all customer feedback, helping 120Water keep track of suggestions, requests, and issues from various stakeholders. Productboard’s integration with Slack and a Chrome plugin ensured seamless feedback collection across teams, making it easier to capture important customer insights from various sources in real-time—all in one place.
“Before I had Productboard, I was known as the sticky note girl... Being able to put all those things in one place is such a gift as a product manager.”
– Courtney Arnott, Director of Product & Solutions, 120Water
The Features Board enabled prioritization and strategic planning, allowing the product team to focus on features that aligned with business goals and customer needs.
Due to this, a newly onboarded part-time product manager was able to quickly create a requirements document based on a year’s worth of feedback already organized in Productboard. This significantly streamlined their process. “She had a requirements document outlined within a week, thanks to Productboard,” says Courtney. “All I did was connect feedback to the feature, and she was able to dissect and understand the problem immediately.”
Productboard played a crucial role in ensuring that 120Water’s product team goals remained aligned with the company’s overall business objectives. This strategic alignment was particularly helpful when communicating with leadership and the board, allowing them to visualize the roadmap and understand the reasoning behind decisions.
“Productboard helps us align with leadership by showing the full picture—what we’re building, how, and why. It also ensures our product team’s goals align with the company’s overall business objectives.”
– Courtney Arnott, Director of Product & Solutions, 120Water
By providing contributor access to stakeholders, 120Water invited direct input, fostering collaboration and ensuring alignment. The product team’s ability to communicate strategy and priorities across the organization improved, ensuring everyone was on the same page.
By shifting from a support ticket-heavy system to a more strategic product management approach, 120Water quickly freed up the engineering team’s bandwidth. “We were able to reduce new tickets by 26% weekly for our engineering team,” explains Courtney. “It helped us shift from a ticket-heavy system to a strategic product management approach.”
120Water measures the success of their engineering and product team using several KPIs, all supported by Productboard:
Productboard fostered a product-led mindset within 120Water, enabling the product team to communicate effectively across departments. This cultural shift improved cross-functional collaboration and enhanced the overall understanding of product development processes.
A recent success using Productboard was the launch of a new dashboard for state-level users—addressing one of the key LCRR compliance guidelines. This dashboard provides water system submissions and compliance metrics in aggregate, helping state agencies track progress more effectively.
“Having the ability to surface all the steps into Productboard, so you can see what’s needed and when it’s expected, not only helps us align on what we’re doing but also how we’re doing it.”
– Courtney Arnott, Director of Product & Solutions, 120Water
120Water plans to continue using Productboard to support their compliance journey, particularly as they near the critical October 2024 regulatory deadline. The platform will be instrumental in driving further innovation and ensuring the company stays ahead of customer needs in the drinking water technology space.
