As a wholly state-owned enterprise under the Shenzhen State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission, Shenzhen Environment & Water Group Co., Ltd. operates across the entire water industry value chain—including raw water supply, tap water production, sewage treatment, and aquatic environmental remediation. The company provides 100% of Shenzhen’s water supply and handles over 50% of its drainage services; additionally, it operates numerous water projects across seven provinces nationwide, serving a population of more than 30 million.
An expansive business footprint generates massive volumes of operational data—spanning daily water supply, pipeline network pressure, water quality metrics, and sewage treatment volumes. How can valuable insights be rapidly extracted from this data to truly inform business decisions? This is precisely the question Shenzhen Environmental Water Group has been continuously addressing.
Last week, the Lingyang Quick BI team visited the Shenzhen Environment & Water Group to conduct a training session on intelligent BI products, helping business staff shift from "passively waiting for reports" to "actively engaging with data." Covering everything from product philosophy and practical exercises to feature demonstrations and usage guidelines, the training was packed with valuable insights and sparked enthusiastic interaction among the participants.
At the first stop of the training, the Quick BI instructor began by discussing the specific problems that intelligent BI can solve.
The Quick BI instructor detailed the product's four core attributes: "out-of-the-box" readiness, which lowers the barrier to entry for data analysis; agile analysis, which drastically shortens the cycle from requesting insights to viewing results; data connectivity, which supports a wide range of data sources and environment compatibility; and intelligent openness, which provides ample scope for deep integration with business systems.
If the product introduction is about understanding what it is, then the subsequent live demonstration is about witnessing its results firsthand.
A Quick BI instructor provided a comprehensive demonstration of the capabilities of "Smart Q." The product's design philosophy centers on three key concepts: accuracy, ensuring every query yields trustworthy results; insight, going beyond the mere presentation of numbers to uncover underlying trends and anomalies; and enterprise-grade quality, meeting rigorous standards for access control and data security.
During the demonstration, four functional modules were showcased in turn:
"Q Dashboard" enables one-click report creation, dramatically boosting analysis efficiency. The system translates natural language directly into report-building commands, eliminating the need for complex configuration. It also features one-click styling, allowing anyone to quickly generate visually appealing reports with tasteful color schemes and clear, intuitive chart layouts—making data analysis a truly pleasing experience.
"Q Query" enables efficient data retrieval through natural language Q&A, alleviating the burden of data extraction. It supports not only standard queries but also anomaly detection: it automatically identifies outliers in reports or data files and allows for drill-down analysis to pinpoint their sources—for instance, breaking down monthly profit fluctuations to the specific customer level. Additionally, it handles complex, multi-step query scenarios, enabling a progressive, deep-dive analysis to uncover the insights behind the data.
"Q Insights" delivers data summaries and intelligent interpretations in a single step, eliminating the hassle of data retrieval and boosting information efficiency. It integrates capabilities such as data extraction, interpretation, trend analysis, and diagnostic attribution, allowing the data itself to "tell" the story of your business.
Q Reports offers automated report planning and generates summaries within minutes, delivering both efficiency and valuable insights. It supports intelligent content editing and periodic data updates, ensuring reports remain accurate and up-to-date. Regarding insight attribution, Smart Q Reports aligns closely with business scenarios by offering multiple attribution models; it distills deep insights from data to meet diverse business analysis needs.
From setup to querying and from interpretation to reporting, the entire data analysis workflow became tangible and concrete during the demonstration. Many participants remarked, "I hadn't realized that using Smart Q for data analysis could be so convenient."
In the third segment of the training, the Quick BI instructor focused on how to effectively use "Ask Data," providing an in-depth explanation of practical methods and techniques.
What appears to be a simple data query operation actually involves a complete processing pipeline: Chain-of-Thought reasoning → SQL statement generation → interactive data visualization → intelligent data interpretation.Once users understand this chain of events, it becomes clearer to them why asking a question in one way yields more accurate results than asking it in another.
Building on this foundation, the Quick BI instructor provided a detailed explanation of standard query protocols—covering how to clearly define analytical dimensions, appropriately limit query scopes, identify phrasing likely to cause misunderstandings, and avoid common pitfalls encountered when formulating data queries.
During the final Q&A session, participants raised specific issues encountered during actual use, and the instructor addressed them one by one, fostering an atmosphere of deep engagement in the discussion.
Shenzhen Water Group is leveraging Quick BI to explore a new operational model; for instance, by using "Q Reports," the company automates multidimensional analysis of work order data—categorized by type, intake channel, and time—and intelligently selects the most intuitive visualizations to present the results.Once this model matures, staff will no longer need to spend vast amounts of time each month on data migration; instead, they will be able to open a report to instantly view trends, identify issues, and make decisions—truly allowing data to stay ahead of business operations.
From reports to conversations, and from data sets to decision-making, Shenzhen Environment & Water Group—a benchmark enterprise in China's urban water sector—has leveraged the "Quick BI Smart Q" tool to drive a shift among business staff from passively waiting for data to actively utilizing it, thereby providing a replicable model for the digital transformation of state-owned enterprises.Moving forward, the two parties will continue to deepen their collaboration, constantly expanding the scope of intelligent analysis applications across core water utility operations. By harnessing the power of data, they aim to drive high-quality development in urban water services and jointly propel the industry’s transition from an experience-driven model to a data-driven one.
Alibaba Positions for Accelerated AI Growth in Second Half of 2026
1,444 posts | 502 followers
FollowKalpesh Parmar - May 7, 2026
jffu - December 9, 2020
Alibaba Clouder - March 29, 2018
Alibaba Cloud Native Community - January 21, 2026
Alibaba Cloud Indonesia - August 5, 2021
Alibaba Clouder - June 11, 2018
1,444 posts | 502 followers
Follow
Big Data Consulting for Data Technology Solution
Alibaba Cloud provides big data consulting services to help enterprises leverage advanced data technology.
Learn More
Big Data Consulting Services for Retail Solution
Alibaba Cloud experts provide retailers with a lightweight and customized big data consulting service to help you assess your big data maturity and plan your big data journey.
Learn More
Quick BI
A new generation of business Intelligence services on the cloud
Learn More
Business Mid-End Solution
This solution provides you with an enterprise-level omnichannel digital platform that gets your procurement and sales onto the same platform to enhance business competitiveness.
Learn MoreMore Posts by Alibaba Cloud Community
