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Industry Concerns Reveal Threads of Commonality
Author(s) -
Lacey Marcia
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
journal ‐ american water works association
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.466
H-Index - 74
eISSN - 1551-8833
pISSN - 0003-150X
DOI - 10.1002/j.1551-8833.2012.tb08830.x
Subject(s) - workforce , business , state (computer science) , marketing , pessimism , service (business) , key (lock) , public relations , economics , political science , economic growth , ecology , philosophy , epistemology , algorithm , computer science , biology
The 2012 State of the Water Industry Report shows that the state of the economy is foremost on the minds of water professionals. Affecting not only how people view the soundness of the water industry overall, but also how they rank the important issues they're facing, the economy caused the first dip in respondents' soundness ratings in more than five years. Behind that pessimistic view lie the top five critical issues pinpointed by the respondents: business factors (including the financing of infrastructure rehabilitation), infrastructure, regulatory concerns, source water, and workforce. Finance is a key component of the top three issues, and infrastructure and regulatory concerns are clearly part of the broad category of business factors. The category “business factors” covers a lot of territory by itself. Pricing, strategic business planning, information technology, workforce, customer service, and conservation are just a few of the topics in this category that are covered in this month's focus articles.