OVO Home Services: an enterprise data platform after acquisition
Consolidating millions of records across two organisations into a governed, cloud-native data platform, following OVO's acquisition of SSE's home services business.
Overview
Following OVO’s acquisition of SSE’s GB household energy and related services business, transparently.tech was engaged to define and deliver the target-state enterprise data architecture for the newly expanded Home Services operation.
The challenge
The merger brought real technical and operational complexity: multiple legacy platforms and business processes to consolidate, millions of customer and service records to migrate and transform, and conflicting customer, policy and product definitions across the two organisations. Reporting was fragmented and enterprise metrics inconsistent. AWS and Kafka-based operational platforms needed to feed into enterprise analytics, GDPR and governance requirements applied throughout, and the legacy Microsoft SQL Server enterprise data warehouse was due for retirement.
OVO needed a modern data platform capable of trusted analytics, operational insight and long-term scalability, not a patch on the old one.
The solution
transparently.tech defined and delivered a cloud-native medallion architecture, using Azure-based tooling for ingestion and transformation pipelines alongside a centralised BigQuery enterprise data warehouse. The result was a unified data model across customer, policy and product domains, with standardised engineering practices, reporting logic and governance controls applied consistently across teams.
transparently.tech also led architecture governance and cross-team alignment for the programme: shared architectural principles, delivery standards and decision-making forums that brought consistency across engineering teams, suppliers and operational stakeholders, and established a new data engineering capability that coordinated delivery across client teams, engineering leadership, third-party providers and offshore suppliers.
Security and compliance were built in throughout, with GDPR-aligned controls and assurance across the migration and the platform’s ongoing operation.
Technology
| Capability | Technology |
|---|---|
| Cloud data architecture | Azure Data Factory, Azure Databricks |
| Enterprise data warehouse | Google BigQuery |
| Operational platform integration | AWS |
| Streaming and event processing | Kafka |
| Legacy platform retired | Legacy SQL Server data warehouses |
| Security framework | GDPR aligned |
Outcomes
- Unified customer and operational reporting across the merged organisations, replacing fragmented, inconsistent metrics
- Legacy analytical infrastructure retired, with a governed single source of truth in its place
- Stronger cross-team engineering standards and architectural governance, carried forward into OVO’s continued transformation roadmap
- Improved operational management across home insurance and boiler maintenance services, built on data foundations designed for future growth
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