Alabama Gas Co Begins Data Warehousing Project
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Stewart Deck has reported in ComputerWorld that officials of the Alabama Gas Company have utilized three years of historical data about its 410,000 customers to undertake a data warehousing project linking all of its systems -- from new customer ordering to payroll applications -- so the firm can not only sharpen its marketing focus but also obtain a clearer picture of its own internal systems.

Deck noted that Alabama Gas, a division of Energen Corp. in Birmingham, Ala., now has all of its customer information in a mainframe-based IBM DB2 database. Every time a gas customer deals with the company by paying a bill or calling a service rep, information about that customer is logged in to the mainframe.

But the company's Transportation Services division's applications run on Windows NT, its oil exploration division runs on a mixture of Unix and Windows NT and its payroll systems are Unix-based. So Alabama Gas had to find a way for all of its applications -- mainframe, Unix and Windows NT -- to share data effectively.

"We've needed a central place where we can get critical information for better decision-making," Gary Warner, Alabama Gas' director of data services told Deck So Warner and his team are putting in a data warehouse built on Oracle Corp.'s Oracle8 database running on Hewlett-Packard Co.'s HP-UX version of Unix. To link the company's different systems they turned to Information Builders Inc.'s EDA product line. Equally important, Alabama Gas will be able to sharpen its marketing, spot usage trends and query the data more easily than it could before.

The company compiles data on new residential construction and will be able to use its warehouse to show which houses in a new development haven't signed on for the gas line running in front of their house. "We could then target these individuals and offer free gas hookups or a free hot water heater if they'll become a customer," Warner said. Sending such offers to homeowners who aren't close to a gas line would be wasted effort, he added.

Or, by comparing yearly temperature trends with individual gas consumption, the company could use its warehouse to discover which people have cut their gas bill by installing electric heat pumps. It would then send out letters offering them other gas services.

The kind of individual marketing attention that data warehouses provide is becoming a necessary tool for utilities, analysts told ComputerWorld. "Utilities are starting to get to know their customers and differentiating themselves by providing focused customer service instead of just mass mailing," said Michael Hiem, an analyst at A. G. Edwards & Sons Inc. in St. Louis.

Consolidating customer information also lets companies run predictive models that can help their marketing departments, observed Mitch Kramer, an analyst at Patricia Seybold Group in Boston.