Case Study: How Austin Water Refreshed the Status Quo with Synario

For over 100 years, Austin Water has provided safe, reliable, and affordable drinking water and wastewater treatment to the people of Austin. Serving a city of more than one million residents across 548 square miles, the utility is managing services in one of the fastest-growing cities in Texas.

Austin Water’s operations are massive: Three water treatment plants intake up to 335 million gallons from the Colorado River each day, while two wastewater processing plants handle up to 150 million gallons daily. In addition, the utility’s water reclamation efforts return over one billion gallons of clean water to the river annually.

Supporting operations of this scale requires equally robust planning and forecasting. In 2020, Austin Water managed a $600 million annual budget, with a five-year capital improvement plan totaling nearly $1 billion.

Maintaining affordability, transparency, and operational reliability under this pressure is a core priority — and a challenge that requires smart, flexible financial planning.

The Challenge: Affordability Demands Meet Spreadsheet Constraints

Austin Water faced a mounting challenge: maintaining affordability and service quality without resorting to rate increases. Financial Manager III Christina Romero and her team were tasked with answering critical questions about the utility’s fiscal health and long-term resilience:

• Were they meeting financial policy targets and debt commitments?
• How would rate changes impact affordability, revenue forecasts, and customer support programs?
• Could they design new assistance options for low-income residents without jeopardizing operational stability?

These were pressing, interconnected questions, and answering them quickly and confidently was proving difficult with their existing tools.

At the time, Austin Water’s finance team was operating almost entirely in Excel, juggling 19 or more scenarios through an increasingly complex web of formulas and linked sheets.

Each year, the budgeting process stretched over two to three months, followed by weeks of reformatting and PowerPoint preparation. Any question from leadership that required a new assumption or scenario meant going back to the drawing board, rebuilding models, and validating data all over again.

The team had effectively hit the ceiling of what spreadsheets could handle, wasting time on manual processes instead of focusing on insight and strategy. Romero knew they needed a better way to manage assumptions, forecast across multiple time horizons, and communicate results clearly to decision-makers.

At the same time, the 2020 to 2021 fiscal period brought added urgency. The pandemic and other economic pressures heightened affordability concerns, with many residents struggling to pay their water bills.

Austin Water needed a way to evaluate customer assistance programs and their long-term financial implications without slowing down the entire planning cycle. Traditional methods simply couldn’t provide the speed, flexibility, or confidence Romero’s team needed.

Their challenge was clear: evolve beyond static spreadsheets to a dynamic, scenario-based financial modeling system that could keep up with uncertainty, accelerate budgeting, and support equitable, data-driven decisions.

“We outgrew Excel models some time ago, and we really needed something with improved functionality that allows for an unlimited number of assumptions and scenarios. Synario helped us start working on our forecast right away. ”
– Christina Romero, Financial Manager III, Austin Water

The Solution: Building a Collaborative Forecasting Engine

Establishing Power User Teams for Collaboration

After implementing Synario, Austin Water transformed the way its finance team modeled, forecasted, and communicated results.

Romero began by creating four dedicated Synario Power User teams, each responsible for specific aspects of forecasting and budget development. This team structure not only distributed ownership but also enhanced collaboration across departments, allowing preparers and reviewers to stay aligned throughout the process.

Synario’s intuitive platform encouraged deeper engagement, empowering team members to contribute directly to financial modeling rather than relying on static updates from a single source.

“Synario allowed for more people to understand what it takes to create and maintain a forecast. It really kicked off our current group effort, which we didn’t have before. Now, we’re continuing this collaborative effort. We’re not so siloed from each other anymore, and it’s made our jobs so much easier.”
– Christina Romero, Financial Manager III, Austin Water

Streamlining Executive Communication with Real-Time Modeling

With the new system in place, Romero’s team leveraged Synario’s real-time modeling and presentation tools to improve executive communication. They built a comprehensive total fund summary, detailed enough for the analytical team while condensed for senior leadership.

For the first time, Romero could present live in meetings, adjusting models on the spot as leadership asked questions. This real-time responsiveness eliminated bottlenecks, boosted leadership confidence, and facilitated faster consensus on key financial decisions, all while presenting data in clear, actionable visuals.

Enhancing Scenario Planning and Affordability Insights

Synario also gave Austin Water new agility in scenario planning. Using dynamic adjustment tables, Romero’s team could immediately test the impact of different assumptions, such as adding $100 million in capital funding over three years or adjusting rates for customer assistance programs.

These capabilities allowed the utility to analyze outputs like Average Annual Bill as a percentage of Median Household Income (MHI), ensuring rates stayed below the 1.5% affordability benchmark.

The results were tangible: Austin Water maintained its 10% rate discount program, launched a multifamily assistance program with Austin Energy, and kept overall rates trending downward, demonstrating that smarter modeling drives more effective, equitable outcomes for the community.

“Synario helped streamline the forecasting process and made it easy to evaluate changes in revenue and expenses and the significant impact of capital projects.”
– Joseph Gonzales, Financial Services Assistant Director, Austin Water

The Results: Stronger Collaboration, Faster Forecasting, Better Outcomes

Expanded Team Capacity and Collaboration

Thanks to Synario, Austin Water expanded its forecast modeling team from just two people to eight, creating a more collaborative and empowered environment. Key improvements included:

• Distributed ownership: Each team member took ownership of a specific part of the model, eliminating bottlenecks and enabling parallel work.
• Regular alignment: Biweekly budget meetings replaced sparse, infrequent check-ins, fostering stronger communication across the team.
• Broken silos: The new structure ensured everyone understood and contributed to the forecasting process.

Dramatically Faster Modeling and Forecasting

With the team structure in place, Austin Water fully leveraged Synario’s capabilities to accelerate its processes:

• Tasks that once took months in spreadsheets now took weeks
• Presentations that required weeks to prepare now took hours
• Real-time modeling enabled instant adjustments during executive meetings — no rebuilding or revalidating required

This agility allowed leadership to explore multiple scenarios on the spot, building confidence and trust in both the data and the planning process.

“Using Synario significantly reduced the amount of time needed to complete the forecast process. The forecast was completed on schedule without a significant amount of manual adjustments, which greatly reduced the potential for errors. This has been a worthwhile investment for our organization.”
– Robert Rowan,  Financial Manager II,  Austin Water

Measurable Impact on Operations and Customers

Stronger collaboration and faster, more accurate forecasting delivered tangible results:

• Maintained affordability for customers
• Launched innovative assistance programs
• Kept average bills below key benchmarks
• Reduced errors and improved internal communication

Long-Term Platform Adoption

Leadership was so impressed with Synario’s efficiency and clarity that they approved a five-year platform extension, embedding it into the utility’s core financial processes.

By streamlining forecasting, empowering the team, and enabling transparent, real-time decision-making, Austin Water achieved a level of planning and responsiveness that was previously unattainable.

Synario: Your Path to Faster, Smarter Forecasting

Austin Water turned to Synario to overcome the limitations of spreadsheets and create an industry-specific forecasting process that was faster, more flexible, and collaborative. The results speak for themselves: streamlined modeling, real-time scenario analysis, and a team empowered to make confident, data-driven decisions.

If your organization is facing similar challenges — slow processes, siloed teams, or cumbersome spreadsheets — Synario offers a solution. Designed to be dynamic, adaptable, and collaborative, it helps teams forecast, visualize, and plan their financial future with confidence.

See for yourself how Synario can transform your financial modeling and empower your team to make smarter, faster, and more informed decisions. Book a demo today.