Energieversorgung Mittelrhein (evm) is the largest municipal energy and service company in Rhineland-Palatinate. Approximately 1,000 employees ensure the supply of green electricity, natural gas, heat and drinking water to a total of 340,000 costumers. Naturally, a large amount of data has always been generated in the daily business – valuable information that, for example, could have been used for creating customer potentials. However, due to the inconsistency of the system at that time, this opportunity went unused: “Our data was available in different individual solutions, some of which were not directly linked,” Mona Meyer, Division Manager Sales Control and Sales Strategy at evm, says. Accordingly, employees in the specialist departments often had to create their queries manually, which cost a lot of time. Quick ad-hoc analyses were also very difficult to carry out.

Reliable decisions were difficult to make

“Above all, however, we had no uniform results and key figures due to the various individual solutions,” Mona Meyer explains. This basis did not allow for reliable decision-making, for example on the distribution of budgets or investments in business and product areas. There was an urgent need for merging the information into one ‘numerical truth’.” A task that initially seemed like an insurmountable hurdle to those responsible: “Given the high level of complexity, the number of people involved and the numerous data sources, we seriously had to ask ourselves: Can this even work?”

An agile approach reduces complexity

The problem was solved by working together with ORAYLIS. “Thanks to the structured and agile approach of our new partner, we were able to quickly get an overview of our initial situation and the next steps,” Mona Meyer says. From day one, the project management team set the right course and involved the appropriate employees in the process. The team quickly worked its way into both the complex structure of the source data and the at times complex technical content. “As the project progressed, the ORAYLIS team was keeping track of everything. Among other things, regular success check-ins and coordination led the project to success in a targeted manner.”

Modern Data Warehouse enables valid decision-making

After only a short period of time, evm had a modern Data Warehouse in the Microsoft Azure Cloud. As a “single point of truth”, the solution collects all data on one platform and finally delivers the desired, consistent key figures. On this basis, the management can now make valid decisions regarding urgent business issues. At the same time, cross-divisional analyses are considerably simplified for employees in controlling, marketing, customer service and sales.

Likewise, the manual effort for standard reports has been eliminated, as these are now provided automatically via Power BI. This saves a lot of time and resources in the process of compiling relevant information. Employees can concentrate on their core tasks. “This is only the beginning of what can and needs to be done. Both our database and our reporting system must now be developed continuously. The expandable cloud approach in Azure and the new platform offer the best conditions for this development. There is one thing that we have learned during this process: For projects like this, it is key to have an experienced partner on your side. We would have never been able to realise our visions successfully with internal resources alone. ORAYLIS provided us with excellent support,” Uwe Worch, head of IT at evm, says.

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