Powered by Data: E.ON’s Journey

E.ON began its data readiness (DaRe) journey in 2018 after realizing that taking better advantage of data and data intelligence would help improve customer services, increase efficiency in energy production and make it easier to meet the regulatory requirements of the countries where E.ON operates. With E.ON’s data landscape being enormously heterogeneous – including several thousand applications where data is stored (SAP, Microsoft Azure, Oracle, old legacy Windows servers and others) – the company needed a data intelligence software that could map as many data sources as possible. The E.ON DaRe team spent months evaluating metadata management and data governance capabilities to ensure they would select the right data intelligence software provider that could help them not only kickstart their data journey, but be integral in helping them achieve their long-term goals.

Guided by its vision, E.ON selected erwin by Quest as its software provider. erwin Data Intelligence by Quest was initially deployed for automated metadata management, data lineage documentation and impact analysis. With these capabilities, E.ON has improved data quality, detected data redundancies and achieved IT efficiencies that were not originally planned for when first starting their data readiness journey. “We use erwin for the auto-configuration of data pipelines,” said Romina Pyplacz, Global Head of Data Management and Data Governance at E.ON. “I did not imagine in 2018 that I would use a data catalog to automatically configure data pipelines, but I can. I can do things that I didn’t even think about when I got started.”

The E.ON DaRe team has used the data governance and data literacy capabilities of erwin Data Intelligence to deliver a standardized, business-focused data catalog to improve IT and business collaboration, as well as alignment. By defining and standardizing common business metrics such as KPIs, and making associated data asset relationships clearly visible within erwin Data Intelligence mind maps, E.ON has been able to provide clarity for business stakeholders.

Emboldened by the success of these initiatives, E.ON expanded its erwin partnership with a focus on data modeling harmonization by adopting erwin Data Modeler by Quest, and began to explore the addition of data quality, data provisioning and data-as-a service as key E.ON data readiness offerings.

E.ON’s DaRe team began as a team of only two E.ON employees in 2018 but has expanded to include more than 30 experts operating within 24 business units. erwin by Quest is used by more than 600 E.ON users today for data modeling, intelligence
and governance.

Benefits

• E.ON identified more than 2 million Euros in business impact after 24 months.
• E.ON estimates a savings of 30 percent on external data management costs and a 50 percent reduction in time spent on data discovery because better data availability and quality have a direct impact on productivity for each data-driven activity across the enterprise.
• By delivering “data governance as a service” for one-stop data access and lineage, E.ON has standardized its vocabulary, met regulatory compliance requirements, and has been able to understand and then optimize how data is used across global operations.

Read the full case study at: https://www.erwin.com/casestudy/powered-by-data-eons-jo