Seven lessons from SADE’s role in Enerjisa’s move to SAS Viya

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One of the best ways to learn is from experience. It’s perhaps even better to learn from other people’s experience, to avoid making the mistakes yourself. It is therefore always good to hear from SAS customers and partners about their experiences using SAS and particularly migrating to new versions or upgrading their infrastructure. I recently hosted a webinar featuring Coskan Yetginer, the Data Engineering Manager at energy company Enerjisa, and Vedat Cumhur Özkan, Head of Data Management at Sade Software and Consultancy, a leading SAS partner in Turkey, talking about Enerjisa’s experience of moving from SAS 9 to SAS Viya. Here are my top takeaways from the event.

1. Relationships with and between customers and partners are often built over many years

We talk a lot about the importance of relationships in B2B marketing and sales. However, we don’t very often look in detail at particular partnerships, and that may blind us to the fact that many partnerships—both direct with customers, and via partners—have been built up over many years. Cumhur explained that SADE and Enerjisa had been working together for more than a decade, delivering successful projects with the SAS environment. I believe this long-term working relationship is an essential element in the success of big IT projects.

2. Kotter was right about needing a ‘burning platform’ to drive change

John Kotter’s eight steps to change start with the creation of a sense of urgency: a so-called ‘burning platform’ from which to drive change. This is a long-established model of change management, but clearly still relevant. Coskan talked about four main reasons for needing to move from SAS 9 to SAS Viya. The first was the growth in data volume that had made it hard to track and manage data effectively in SAS 9. He explained that working at 90% capacity was making the system unstable. The second reason was the inability to set up a disaster recovery system because of the high disk space requirement. The third was the inability to meet requirements for automation security and internal audits, and finally, there was a desire to reduce management and maintenance costs by moving to a more modern infrastructure. The lack of capacity in particular had become an urgent problem and was driving the move.

3. Every customer has a slightly different approach to using SAS

I always like to hear how customers use SAS. Coskan explained that Enerjisa has been using SAS since 2014. Projects and reports on SAS range from field operation reporting to financial revenue assurance projects. The company primarily uses SAS as a business intelligence tool across almost all business units. The low code/no code environment had enabled this to spread across the company, supported by the ability to gather data from multiple sources. However, Enerjisa also uses SAS in a more sophisticated way, as an AI tool to forecast demand for electricity using a multi-model structure. Machine learning models are also an important part of predicting electricity meter failures and other field operations. This history of both high-level use of very advanced capabilities and broad company-wide use of a much less specific capability is a reminder that customers may have a wide range of uses for SAS products.

4. You need to build the right team to support migration

Coskan reported that building the right team was the most important step in delivering the migration—even before building the infrastructure. The team included the entire data engineering core team, 21 people, working with 10 consultants from SADE with support from SAS Turkey. There were also 15 members of the data management team and 40 people from business units to test and finalise the project. This gave a total of 86 people, over a period of 200 days. The team spent a lot of time communicating with business units to keep them abreast of developments. Coskan added that it had been crucial to involve other IT teams in the migration work, especially the information security and network teams. This had enabled resolution of critical issues such as getting hardware ready and managing security updates.

5. Adequate planning and organizing is essential in delivering change

Coskan described the process across eight months, three for planning and six for execution, with an overlap in the middle. In the discovery phase, the team identified which teams used SAS, to work out who should be involved, reviewing all workflows with the Viya team and the business units. They identified 200 workflows, each of which was considered a mini project. This enabled the system to be cleansed of unused workflows—helpful given that Enerjisa had been running the same system for more than 10 years. A specific tool was used to divide projects into tasks, and assign the tasks, which were evaluated using the Scrum methodology. This provided a clear plan, which had enabled the project to be managed.  

6. Documentation may be dull, but it can be critical to success

Coskan emphasized the importance of documentation in delivering the migration project. He explained that at the start of the project, there had been some confusion about coding practices, library naming, and comments, particularly how to comment. To address this, the team held three-day sessions to create a guide with key stakeholders. They then used this documentation throughout the project, updating it as new issues arose and were resolved.

7. Measuring success is important to demonstrate value for money

Coskan described the benefits that have been delivered through SAS Viya. There had been a 95% reduction in use risk and a 50% reduction in disk needs, from 200 terabytes to 100 terabytes, plus a 40% reduction in average process time for each workflow. These achievements had been possible through data compression, and because of the capabilities of SAS Viya. The migration had therefore made the system sustainable for the future. It had also solved the issues of information security and internal audits, as well as providing some unexpected benefits and opportunities. 

If you would like to delve deeper into the topics discussed during our webinar, you can watch the on-demand recording at your convenience for more insights and valuable information.