Business Results
Accelerates data discovery
Data catalog streamlines links to SAP and Azure Synapse
Democratises data
User friendliness encourages use and data culture in a rapidly growing customer base
Facilitates forecasting
Accurate data helps anticipate and meet customer needs.
Accelerating the Transformation of Data Discovery
Endeavour Energy supplies almost three million Australians in the Greater West region of Sydney with energy sources for home and business. Powering Australia’s third-largest and rapidly-growing economy with efficient and cost-effective service delivery required Endeavour to create a strategic roadmap for digital technology.
As part of its overall digital transformation program, the company included a data resolution project to help them address multiple challenges and difficulties in finding and accessing data for more than 20 million assets. They also needed to resolve issues surrounding trusting and managing the quality of their data, which was typically stored across various data silos.
Endeavour Energy recognised a data intelligence platform was a key part of the solution to resolve the dual issues of data access and integrity. It would maximise implementing its SAP enterprise software designed to replace 30 legacy applications and manage the data associated with 20 million assets. A data intelligence platform would also improve user access to 60 additional data stores.
"Endeavour Energy needed a data intelligence platform to help us access our vast information reserves of over 20 million assets. This would implement a framework for metadata management and create a strategic centralised data repository adding value to our business insights."
Data Lead, Endeavour Energy
Democratising Data Access: How User Friendliness Proved Successful for Alation
There was no question that making data more accessible from an everyday user perspective was a key driver during the selection process. Lewis saw no value in restricting data access to the technical team. The goal for a user-friendly solution underpinned his industry research, seeing Lewis attend forums and identify this capability as a critical driver for the competitive tender.
Three core decision-making points led to the successful selection of Alation: ease of use, cost, and the ability to meet the base-level capabilities Endeavour Energy had identified.
"The general accessibility and Google-style search engine were the compelling reasons we selected Alation."
Data Lead, Endeavour Energy
Transforming the Data Discovery Use Case
Today Alation is powering the search and discovery of data held in the Endeavour Energy SAP environment and linked to other data systems and tools, such as Microsoft Azure Analytics and Power BI. Together Alation, its integration partner Deloitte, and Endeavour Energy have segmented the rollout for 15 data domains.
The first domain was Health and Safety, where Endeavour identified a core set of data stewards during the Alation Right Start process who would champion using a new data intelligence platform. These super user data stewards would contribute to their team’s specific discovery and use of metadata. Next up was the Procurement team, with Customer Assets and Projects following them. Each group of data stewards has contributed to the Key Measures of Performance articles, glossary of terms, and critical reports across the SAP and Azure Synapse platforms and toolsets.
The end result? Today data and metrics can be defined more accurately than ever before, with a very healthy adoption of Alation in each domain. For example, calculations for crucial objectives relating to hours worked, and the frequency rate of injuries are now consistent and can be published confidently.
“By adopting the Alation data intelligence platform, we have built a community of data practitioners who clearly understand how accurate the data is, and it’s now easier for them to trust the information,” commented Lewis. “This consistency means we are no longer having discussions about the accuracy of metrics. Instead, we can focus on analytical interpretations of those metrics and their meaning for each business domain.”
"By adopting the Alation data intelligence platform, we have built a community of data practitioners who clearly understand how accurate the data is, and it’s now easier for them to trust the information. This consistency means we are no longer having discussions about the accuracy of metrics. Instead, we can focus on analytical interpretations of those metrics and their meaning for each business domain."
Data Lead, Endeavour Energy
For Endeavour Energy, Alation is delivering on its role of making data accessible and creating a robust foundation for ongoing innovation. Alation’s data intelligence platform enables the acceleration of projects and organisational transformation. It’s helping the company internally to create new sources of trusted data that a modern organisation requires to serve its customers – meeting their expectations about efficiency and cost-effective delivery of services.
"Investing in an Alation data intelligence platform is our foundation for innovation and enablement. With accurate data, we can forecast what our customers are looking for before they even realise – putting us in a powerful position to transition from a traditional ‘poles and wires’ business to a modern distributed system operator."
Data Lead, Endeavour Energy
The Data team has also implemented the Alation Data Governance app for workflows and publishing information trusting it to deliver quality control for end users. “It’s very early days for implementation for the DG app, but it’s one we know will provide significant value as our use case matures,” Lewis continued.
About Endeavour Energy
Endeavour Energy is a New South Wales-based energy business with an estimated value of AUD6 billion. They work with customers, stakeholders, and regulators to help deliver a clean energy future where smart meters, batteries, and solar enable customers to generate, store, and sell back electricity into the grid.
