Driving Analytic Efficiencies with Databricks’ Unified Data Platform

Client: A Leading Consumer Goods Manufacturer

Industry: Manufacturing & Supply Chain

Overview

A rapidly expanding portfolio company in the consumer goods manufacturing sector faced significant challenges consolidating financial and operational data across disparate ERP systems. This fragmentation impeded their ability to produce consistent, reliable reporting—essential for monitoring performance, achieving synergies, and driving business growth.

The company was in the process of transitioning from legacy ERP systems to SAP, but the migration was time-intensive. In the interim, they needed a scalable, unified data platform to provide accurate reporting and actionable insights, leveraging both historical and live data for current and future analysis.

Project Approach: Build on Databricks’ Foundation

Blue Orange Digital adopted a phased approach, ensuring quick value delivery while minimizing risk. Through collaborative discovery sessions, the team aligned on the client’s business needs and crafted a comprehensive roadmap.

The initial phase focused on demonstrating immediate value by implementing a pilot solution for a key warehouse site and ERP system. This proof-of-concept showcased the power of Databricks’ medallion architecture, providing a robust foundation for data quality, governance, and consistency. The team included Solution Architects, Data Engineers, and Data Analysts who worked together to build a scalable, production-ready data platform and advanced BI solution.

The Solution: Unified Data Platform Powered by Databricks

The client’s unified data platform was built on Databricks’ cutting-edge lakehouse architecture, which seamlessly integrated legacy ERP systems and SAP. The solution provided a single source of truth and harmonized both historical and real-time data, enabling data-driven decisions at every level of the organization.

Key Phases of the Solution:

Platform Setup and Initial Integration:

Blue Orange developed a scalable data lakehouse using Databricks, integrating data from the largest legacy ERP system and the new live SAP environment. This architecture ensured immediate insights into current and historical data while supporting future scalability.

Legacy System Integration:

Data from additional legacy systems, such as QuickBooks, Syspro, and Sage, were integrated into the Databricks platform. This ensured consistent reporting and data availability, even during the SAP migration.

Centralized Data Governance with Unity Catalog:

Leveraging Databricks Unity Catalog, the company achieved centralized data governance, simplifying data access controls and ensuring compliance across all ERP systems. Unity Catalog provided fine-grained access policies, improving data security and enabling auditability for sensitive information.

Automation with Databricks Asset Bundles:

Automation was implemented using Databricks Asset Bundles, streamlining workflows and reducing manual intervention. This enhanced operational efficiency and ensured consistent deployment of data pipeline configurations across environments.

Automated Reporting:

With Databricks powering the backend and tools like Power BI on the front end, the company gained real-time reporting capabilities. This allowed stakeholders to drill into sales and operational metrics while maintaining visibility throughout the transition.

The Value to Stakeholders

The Databricks-powered unified data platform delivered transformative benefits to the company:

Interim Consistency:

Databricks provided a unified data model that enabled accurate reporting across ERP systems during the SAP migration. This eliminated data silos and ensured operational transparency.

Accelerated Post-Acquisition Integration:

Databricks’ modular architecture simplified the onboarding of newly acquired companies, speeding up synergy realization and value generation.

Centralized Data Governance:

Unity Catalog ensured consistent data access policies, improved security, and compliance across systems. This centralized governance provided confidence in the integrity of sensitive data and reduced administrative overhead.

Enhanced Decision-Making:

With real-time data at their fingertips, stakeholders could monitor KPIs, identify trends, and make data-driven decisions to improve operational efficiency and strategic planning.

Operational Efficiency Through Automation:

The use of Databricks Asset Bundles automated key workflows, reducing manual effort and ensuring consistency across deployments. This allowed teams to focus on strategic tasks instead of repetitive configuration management.

Future-Ready Scalability:

The Databricks platform was designed with growth in mind, making it easy to integrate additional acquisitions and scale operations seamlessly.

Cost Savings:

By leveraging Databricks and Blue Orange’s engineering expertise, the company achieved a 70% reduction in implementation costs compared to traditional enterprise data platforms, without compromising on quality or performance.

This journey highlights the transformative power of Databricks. By enabling seamless data integration, real-time insights, centralized governance, and automation, the platform positioned the company for continued success and growth in a competitive market.