SGN selects Talend

SGN, the UK's second largest gas distribution network company, has selected Talend to drive its cross-organizational data initiatives. The energy company will use Talend to to drive a strong data culture throughout its business and power its data transformation and digitalization plans to support the UK government’s Net Zero decarbonization objective. Running in an AWS environment, Talend will help SGN operationalize its data governance strategy, supporting regulatory requirements and greater access, understand, and usage of its data across the organization.

Operating across Scotland and in the south of England, SGN provides gas to 5.9 million homes and businesses. Driven by innovation and customer centricity, the company has been investing in technologies to modernize pipe networks and provide intelligent services through IoT and automation. In 2021, the UK government released its digitalization strategy for the energy sector, highlighting the importance of data and technology to achieve decarbonization and meet its Net Zero objective by 2050. To realize this goal, SGN selected Talend to control and govern data while enabling access and better usage of data by the business.

To address one of the regulatory requirements around data interoperability, SGN is building a system of trust by creating an enterprise view and catalog of its data. The use of Talend’s data governance solutions will support SGN in complying with new and evolving regulatory mandates for energy data, in particular with the digital transformation of the energy networks and the need for robust, credible and interoperable data to feed these solutions.

“Data will play a key role in the innovation that will drive the future of energy and the future of energy sources. We have a number of innovative projects to identify how we are going to use hydrogen on our networks, how we prioritize our network upgrades so that it supports the Net Zero hydrogen targets, and how we optimize our program, so it is the most efficient for the future of gas and gas networks,” explains Shuchi Nagar, Head of Architecture and Data at SGN.

The success of this broader digitalization programme also includes developing greater data literacy across the organization. Bringing the entire organization around data and driving a common understanding of the data is key. The implementation of Talend solutions enables the data team to gain more visibility and provide opportunities for their colleagues to interact with data and provide their insights and knowledge across the business.

“One of the benefits that the Talend platform provides us with is the opportunity to change the perception of data as a conceptual asset that people can't see or touch necessarily, particularly when we are talking in the context of governing and managing our data to deliver value,” adds Gabrielle Barnard, Head of Information Management at SGN.

SGN also required a solution that integrates with different internal applications and offers the scalability and power of SaaS. “Our ecosystem is largely AWS and SaaS applications; our best of breed strategy is cloud first and this was a key criterion in selecting Talend,” says Nagar.

“Healthy data that is accessible and available to everyone fosters a common understanding of data and helps organizations quickly innovate and meet evolving policies and regulations,” said Gareth Vincent, SVP/GM EMEA at Talend. "We’re honored that SGN has selected us to play a critical role in ensuring their data supports the drive toward meeting the decarbonization objectives set by the UK government.”