NEW AG From data silos to added-value data products – A holistic data strategy for NEW

As a regional energy and supply provider for the Lower Rhine region, NEW AG has a very broad remit. The company not only manages the energy supply, water supply, and wastewater disposal in the area surrounding Mönchengladbach, it also manages the region’s public swimming pools and public transport network.

All these areas generate a myriad of data points. In order to leverage the full potential of this data and to create new and innovative products, NEW has been working with inovex to develop an appropriate strategy. This has resulted in the creation of a roadmap for the future implementation of data and AI products – from the initial vision to a roadmap which combines data governance, data architecture, and data infrastructure with a future-proof organisational model for the implementation of added-value data products.

“North Star” workshop sets guiding principles

The project began with the definition of the data and AI vision. The companies worked together in a “North Star” workshop to define goals for the various areas – Data & AI Product Portfolio, Data Architecture & Infrastructure, Data Governance, and Data Culture & Organisation. This resulted in the clear prioritisation of the different areas, one which has served since then as a reliable guide for the project and beyond.

The status quo: lots of data, little transparency

Next, a detailed status quo analysis examined the company’s organisational maturity level. It identified topics which would be extremely significant for NEW but which could not be implemented with the company’s current setup. Like many companies, NEW has an enormous amount of data. The status quo analysis, however, showed the typical pattern of structures which have grown up organically over time, with isolated pockets of data siloed within the various specialist departments or locked up in numerous third-party systems and proprietary solutions. For the internal IT department, this presents a growing challenge. The lack of standardisation makes connecting new interfaces time-consuming and expensive, while data expertise, where it exists at all, is limited to individual departments. NEW’s aims were clear: create transparency, standardise interfaces, and make data products useable across departmental boundaries – all, of course, while adhering strictly to all compliance regulations.

Potential analysis & use cases

In order to demonstrate the new strategy’s added value, specific use cases have been prioritised and added to a roadmap. These included, for example, the data-supported optimisation of usage planning in public transportation and the AI analysis of unstructured data for more accurately identifying customer needs. The use of computer vision to evaluate 3D geodata also offers promising opportunities. These prioritised use cases act as operational guidelines for fleshing out the higher-level strategic areas – a step-by-step process which is to be performed with a constant eye to the specific business benefits.

The strategy

Data Architecture & Infrastructure

On the basis of this analysis, the inovex experts developed a future-proof target architecture. The basis of the tech stack is a central data platform built on Microsoft Azure and Microsoft Fabric, to which a number of flexible components have been added. These are designed to meet such use case requirements as real-time capability and LLM compatibility.

Data Governance

The project involved specific transparency and governance requirements. As data from SAP had to be merged with information from a wide range of other sources, the project team opted for a combination of Microsoft Purview and Azure API Management.

• Azure API Management: Serves as a central gateway for interface maintenance and standardisation.
• Data Catalogue: The integration allows connections and data flows to be visualised in Purview. This will, for the first time, enable an overarching data catalogue to be created, allowing transparency of content, access requirements, and data lineage.

Data Culture & Organisation

A new architecture requires a new organisational model. As the various business areas are at different stages in the digitalisation process, inovex recommended a hybrid hub-and-spoke model:

• Centre of Excellence (hub): A central unit consolidates expertise (Data Science, Data & Platform Engineering) and acts as a service provider and consultant for the specialist areas.
• Decentralised Expertise (spokes): Larger business areas build up their own data competence, while smaller areas are supported by the CoE.

The Results

The project resulted in much more than just a theoretical concept: NEW AG received a practical, directly implementable roadmap. The final results included:

• A detailed target architecture based on Microsoft Fabric.
• A concrete implementation roadmap, including estimates of the effort and resources involved in establishing the infrastructure and implementing the use cases.
• A clear organisational design for the establishment of a Data & AI Centre of Excellence, complete with recommended team composition and FTE requirements

This foundation means that NEW AG is now fully equipped for its transition from a pure data manager to a creator of value-added data and AI products.