Measuring the impact of data integration in cooperative utilities

Data integration can help organizations respond quickly to business and customer needs. However, there is confusion on methods used to achieve integration and the amount of value that IT projects including data integration, provide. A study was conducted from January 2004 through May 2004 that investigated data integration in electric cooperatives. This paper focuses primarily on one aspect of the study, which gives an analysis and summary of the value received from data integration in three cooperative utilities. The method of measurement was based in principal on the goal/question/metric (GQM) methodology. The concept of identifying goals and how to measure those goals is reasonably easy for any small to mid-size business to do. Many cooperatives suffer from a lack of resources, which can make implementation of metrics programs difficult. While goals differ from organization to organization and may not be truly comparable, the results of the study support the expectation that the cooperative that implemented the highest level of data integration did surpass the other cooperatives studied at achieving goals because of the impact provided by data integration.