CASE STUDY

‘Data Rich, Information Poor’: How Pueblo Water Modernized Its Legacy Systems

September 23, 2026

Pueblo Water is a municipal water utility in Pueblo, Colorado, serving a population of just over 114,000 across more than 42,000 active taps, and also bills for sewer, stormwater, and street utility services on behalf of the city. Governed by a five-member elected board and staffed by roughly 138 employees, the small but mighty utility relies on Kristen Piccola, Director of Administrative Services, who has spent 26 years there and led its move to NetSuite, partnering with Caravel on the implementation. 

Challenge 

  • A Legacy System That Locked Up Data: Pueblo Water ran on an AS/400 system that made reporting difficult, requiring near-programmer skills to pull information out, leaving the utility, as Piccola put it, data rich and information poor. 
  • Heavy Reliance on Custom Reports: Getting new information out of the legacy system meant building custom Cognos reports and in-house customizations for nearly any process change, work that depended on a single in-house programmer. 
  • A Need for Mobile, Cloud-Based Workflows: Pueblo Water wanted electronic approvals, dashboards, and KPIs that supervisors and managers could reach from mobile devices, capabilities the utility’s on-premises legacy system could not support. 
  • A Selection Process Interrupted by the Pandemic: Pueblo Water began evaluating new systems in 2019 with advisory support from GFOA, narrowing the field to two vendors before the pandemic forced the project to pause until 2023. 

Solution 

When Pueblo Water picked the project back up in 2023, NetSuite was still at the top of its list, and a GFOA conference introduced the utility to Caravel. Implementation costs had actually decreased since 2019, a shift Piccola attributed to more of the work being handled virtually. “Caravel was really such a great fit to be that additional resource that we needed,” Piccola said. “Our finance team was a small team of five members, and Caravel was our sixth and seventh employee that helped us through that implementation.” 

Pueblo Water chose NetSuite for its robust, real-time reporting and project costing capabilities, both critical for a small finance department tracking a growing pipeline of projects coming out of the pandemic. Working within a six-month timeline to go live in October, ahead of year-end audit season, the team focused on three core modules: financials, procure-to-pay, and inventory management, deliberately leaving historical data behind and tying out only year-to-date figures to keep the deployment efficient. Integrations included daily bank reconciliation, Square Works for check printing, and Azure single sign-on so employees could complete workflow approvals securely from the field. 

That focus extended to how Caravel ran the engagement itself, keeping sessions tightly scoped and adjusting its own team when needed. “There were some meetings that we would schedule for two hours that if they ended up being an hour because they were more efficient, that’s what we did,” Piccola said. “There was even one point on the inventory piece where Caravel said, we have a team member that fits better for how you’re wanting to manage that, and brought in someone else who was better suited for it.” 

Pueblo Water’s legacy system had relied on heavy customization built around a single programmer, so the team leaned on NetSuite’s out-of-the-box design and Caravel’s best-practice guidance rather than recreate that dependency. Dedicated, in-person working sessions, with both teams in the same room, let Caravel make configuration changes on the spot rather than routing requests through a ticket queue. “We didn’t have to send a ticket and then wait a week and come back,” Piccola said. “We were all in the room together, and I think that was a big critical component of the success of the project.” 

Outcome 

  • An On-Time Go-Live Ahead of a Seamless Year-End Audit: Pueblo Water went live in October as planned, giving the utility a full quarter on NetSuite heading into its year-end audit, a rarity for ERP projects that typically run behind schedule. 
  • Mobile Workflow Approvals: Supervisors and managers can now complete workflow approvals from their phones or laptops in the field, rather than being tied to an office computer. 
  • Real-Time Project Reporting: A new project pipeline gives supervisors and managers real-time reporting that compares actuals to budget and incorporates forward-looking projections across the utility’s project portfolio. 
  • A Fast, Clean Move Into Planning and Budgeting: Because its NetSuite data was already accurate and real-time, Pueblo Water moved quickly into NetSuite Planning and Budgeting without the lengthy data validation or cleansing typical of most transitions. 
  • Expanded Automation Through Bill Capture: Pueblo Water has since added NetSuite’s Bill Capture, further automating its payment processing on top of the workflows already built during implementation. 

Looking ahead, Pueblo Water plans to expand training on NetSuite Planning and Budgeting, build a more interactive budget book, and deepen data analytics both internally and for customers through its website, while continuing to enhance the KPIs its departments rely on day to day. 

About Caravel

Caravel has served more than 1,000 clients over the past decade, providing a comprehensive range of services, including accounting, strategy, business process, and technology selection. Caravel is proud to be part of the technology services group of BPM LLP, a top 40 accounting and advisory firm. 

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