APA Group delivers new ERP and cloud-based data strategy

APA Group has rolled out a new enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform as part of a raft of technology programs in the last financial year.

The ASX-listed energy infrastructure business revealed it spent $84 million on technology transformations during FY24, investing in “key foundational projects”.

APA updated shareholders to say the ERP was delivered “on time and on budget” [pdf].

Earlier this year, the company announced its adoption of Workday as its new cloud-based ERP solution.

APA Group’s net profit after tax for 2024 was $119 million.

Need for standardisation

The past 12 months have also seen APA Group adapt to a new cloud infrastructure, part of which is built on Amazon Web Services, and overhaul its data management strategy.

This led to the company adopting DLT-Meta, a framework for building data processing pipelines using Databricks Live Tables and Databricks Labs.

Starting in the last financial year, the project stemmed from APA’s ambition to “move the dial in the data space” and the company’s “overarching need for standardisation”, according to Aaron Butler, APA senior manager of data science and machine learning engineering.

“In our structure, we have very limited resources in terms of expertise that can oversee and manage things, but [we] need scalability to accelerate the delivery of data to all the business users,” he told an audience at Databricks Data + AI World Tour in Sydney.

According to Butler, the adoption of Delta Live Tables assisted APA when the company needed to develop integrations for the same source system for two separate projects, one of which was its ERP.

Responding to a question from iTnews, Butler elaborated: “We had ERP and we had another large-scale, similar project somewhere else in the business and they both had their own reporting requirements.

“We didn’t want two different methods for doing data warehousing and reporting. So, we created the third project, which was to stand up Databricks, to facilitate those two [projects].

“[We wanted] to have a consistent, coherent view that allows [APA] to have centralised oversight.

“Now, we have a system and platform that we can take to other business units and spread out the ability to have self-service data access.”

Secure by design

During his presentation, Butler explained the key pillars underpinning APA Group’s foray into cloud-based data management, the most important being security.

“One of the things that’s underpinning that strategy is being ‘secure by design’. We want to embed a secure-by-design strategy in all our practices, from DevOps, CI/CD and even the way we architect our workspaces,” Butler explained.

On using Databricks Labs to build the Delta Live Tables framework, Butler said: “We hedged our bets... because it’s a community-driven initiative and some of Databricks' large customers are using it.