Optimizing gas pipelines for better operations and customer response
Italgas delivers smarter gas distribution and customer insights with AI/BI
Of data processed daily
Active customers serviced
Reduction in workload costs
Italgas, Europe’s leading gas distributor with over 80,000 km of network, faced significant challenges due to siloed data systems and manual processes, resulting in over 90,000 unresolved customer complaints in 2023. By partnering with Databricks, Italgas unified their data architecture, streamlined operations and empowered their workforce with real-time, AI-driven insights, transforming their approach to data management and customer service. This shift reduced platform costs by 70%, empowered 80% of employees with self-service analytics and enabled faster issue resolution. With greater efficiency and a more agile approach, Italgas is now driving innovation and delivering better customer service.
90,000 customer complaints and no central view
Italgas, with a network spanning over more than 80,000 km, is the primary gas distribution company in Europe. For over 180 years, Italgas has led Italy’s natural gas distribution sector, becoming the top gas distributor in the country. Utilities is a data-intensive sector, requiring robust metering, monitoring and marketing data analysis. In 2017, Italgas embarked on a digital transformation journey, resulting in the creation of Bludigit, a dedicated digital transformation arm. This new venture was created to enhance digital transformation within the energy and utilities sector, conceived to not only strengthen the digital evolution of Italgas but also to extend leading-edge solutions to industry peers. At the heart of Bludigit’s offerings lies a suite of proprietary solutions, backed by a robust ecosystem of technological partners, and powered by the Digital Factory, their technological and innovative hub. The main objective of the service offered by Bludigit is to produce and/or deliver a finished product in the quickest period feasible.
However, Bludigit struggled with siloed data systems, making it difficult for teams to access, analyze and act on critical information in real time. In 2023, the team faced a daunting task: managing over 90,000 customer complaints through a fragmented, manual process. Operators were constantly switching between multiple systems, including Salesforce for complaint management, Meter Data Management (MDM) for usage data and GasToGo for technical information. This siloed approach meant their operators were spending more time gathering and cross-referencing data than resolving customer issues. The lack of a centralized analytics platform also hindered business units from achieving self-service insights, forcing teams to rely on data specialists for every request. “We needed a transformation that would unite these disparate systems and empower our operators with intelligent, data-driven insights. Operational inefficiencies, outdated reports and inconsistencies in data pipelines led to delays in decision-making and increased operational costs,” Serena Delli, Lead Data Architect at Italgas, said.
Transforming gas distribution with data unification
To address these challenges, Italgas turned to the Databricks Data Intelligence Platform as the next phase of the transformation journey, focusing on simplification through unification. The company streamlined their data architecture by eliminating intermediate services like Azure Synapse and Analysis Services, which had previously slowed pipeline performance. Now, data flows seamlessly from Databricks into Power BI and AI/BI Dashboards, ensuring faster, more reliable insights.
Databricks provided the foundation for a unified analytics and AI platform, enabling Italgas to break down silos and democratize access to critical information. By implementing Delta Lake with a medallion architecture — comprising Bronze, Silver and Gold layers — the company optimized their ETL (extract, transform, load) processes and built a robust infrastructure for analytics and machine learning workloads. The integration of Delta Lake technology provided real-time access to critical metrics, eliminating the manual, error-prone processes that had previously slowed decision-making. The system now processes 1TB of data daily across 1,738 pipelines, 23 models and 155 dashboards, serving over 3,000 active, independent users.
The comprehensive adoption of Databricks’ ecosystem has not only simplified Italgas’ data infrastructure but also fostered a culture of innovation and continuous improvement across the organization. With Databricks SQL, business users now have direct access to fresh, actionable insights without relying on technical teams. This shift has led to a 20% performance increase, powered by SQL warehouses running 50% faster from Photon Engine, which enhances caching and query routing. Additionally, the superior performance and scalability of Databricks SQL reduced workload costs by 73% compared with Azure Synapse, delivering both operational efficiency and significant cost savings.
Data governance at Italgas has been significantly strengthened with the introduction of Unity Catalog, which ensures centralized, secure and governed access to critical datasets. This simplification of data management also ensures compliance with industry regulations. Now, 100% of Italgas’ workloads are governed by Unity Catalog. This solid foundation has paved the way for enhanced data democratization through the integration of AI and BI tools. Databricks AI/BI, a native self-service BI solution, is now empowering teams across the organization to access and interpret data independently. “We didn’t expect such high adoption. With AI/BI Dashboards, people naturally started using the platform because they already had access to Databricks, and now 80% of the company is leveraging these tools to derive insights from data,” Serena said. AI/BI’s intuitive interface enables self-service insights and also provides secure, governed access to data through its integration with Unity Catalog. Furthermore, AI/BI serves as an educational bridge, helping business teams understand the capabilities of dashboards and how these insights can address their operational challenges. This transformation laid a solid foundation for advanced analytics, including machine learning applications powered by MosaicML.
Fueling innovation through real-time data access
By unifying their data architecture with Databricks, Italgas successfully simplified complex data processes, improved analytics capabilities and drove enterprisewide data democratization. The result is a more agile, efficient and AI-enabled organization that continuously innovates in the gas distribution industry. They have achieved a 70% reduction in platform costs, which was made possible through Lakeflow Connect, which seamlessly integrates with essential business applications like ServiceNow and Salesforce. As a result, the organization now has a more comprehensive, accessible and actionable view of their entire data ecosystem.
Looking ahead, Italgas anticipates that data analytics, machine learning and AI will continue to play a pivotal role in their growth and operational efficiency. Databricks will be at the core of this evolution, particularly through the integration of the AI/BI Genie Conversation API. By embedding Genie into their meter management system (DEVA) — a product sold to other gas distributors — the organization will enable users to query system performance and identify potential safety concerns using natural language. This functionality will also be implemented in the Control Room application (DANA), ensuring consistent monitoring and proactive issue detection across platforms.
Ultimately, Databricks has simplified operations through a centralized, organized and intuitive platform. “Databricks is a Swiss Army knife with all the tools we would need — versatile, reliable and capable of addressing our diverse data needs — all while delivering simplicity through unification,” Serena concluded.