So, where does DataOps come into the equation?
Energy companies hold massive amounts of data, and like many industries, some have been treading water as they re-architect their infrastructure to not only handle the increasing volume of data but also derive business value from it. If the CDR rollout in the banking sector is anything to go by, energy companies need to get their ducks in a row as early as possible, and getting data governance right is a very important first step in the process.
What you need to know about DataOps
Today’s data is messy and unpredictable, and this just doesn’t fit with the traditional way automated business analytics were deployed. Over the past two decades, there has been an explosion of data alongside the introduction of new technologies - from AI to ML, that have dramatically changed the complexities of data integration. With that has come new expectations around instantaneous, on-demand services that enable organisations to make real-time decisions. To do this, you need fresh, reliable data.
DataOps is a set of practices and technologies that operationalise data management and integration to ensure resiliency, agility and restore order to help organisations solve the challenges of turning data into business value. The practice of DataOps has grown in importance as companies re-architect their data supply chain and come across what's called ‘data drift’ - unexpected and undocumented changes to data structure, semantics, and infrastructure that are a result of modern data architectures.
Over the past couple of years, we’ve seen a shift from DataOps being an unknown element in data management, to organisations being well aware of what it can do for their business. This is especially true as organisations begin streaming data across multiple sources and destinations and seeking out ways to deliver real-time services.
From the introduction of the Consumer Data Right to the explosion of customer data, it’s essential for energy companies, in particular, to understand the need for and value of DataOps to make sense of the data chaos they experience without a solid foundation on which to manage their data integration.
Harnessing DataOps for CDR compliance
The purpose of the CDR is to ensure that customers have all the information that they need to make an informed decision about the best retailer for them. If the retailer is not able to offer that detail at the lowest level, they cannot provide the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) and their customers with the necessary information to make an equal comparison.
The first priority for energy companies needs to be getting their data in order so that they can facilitate the sharing of information in real-time as demanded by the regulator. Companies will need to be able to connect data sets across all environments in order to do this. This is a particular challenge for energy providers given the complex and differing pricing models and the difficulties this creates in data management.
This is where DataOps comes in. For example, moving to a DataOps mindset can create pipelines for the IoT energy meters to provide a much clearer view of a customer's energy usage. Couple that with the information from the energy retailer’s billing system, and the customer has a much richer view of their information which is more accurate and is able to meet the CDR for the purpose that it was created.
Whilst cleaning up your company data can seem daunting, those that don’t operationalise data management and restore order to their ever-growing data sets will fail to harness the power of the data they have at their fingertips. Not only that, but the industries, like energy, that fall under the CDR will soon realise they will have a hard time with compliance. Energy companies need to adopt DataOps in order to find ways to harness data drift, rather than fighting against it.