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Modernizing Market Data & Reducing Costs for National Retailer diagram

Role: Lead Solution Architect / Strategic Advisor Client: National Canadian Retailer (Regulated Market)


The Strategic Challenge: “Flying Blind at High Cost”

The client faced a dual-threat: Over $10,000/month “legacy tax” for an opaque Azure Synapse environment and a total lack of confidence in their market share data.

Competitive Blind Spots

In a regulated market, the client purchased external provider data to track competitor performance. However, due to fragmented regional schemas and inconsistent calculation logic, the Board could not trust the numbers.

Engineering Chaos

There was no version control. Production code lived only in Production, and non-prod environments were significantly out of sync. The system was a “black box” that required constant manual intervention.

The Architectural Blueprint: “Repeatability by Design”

I moved the organization away from a brittle “Staging-Integration-DataMart” model toward a Modern Databricks Medallion Architecture, focused on transparency and engineering standards.

  • Market Share Harmonization: Engineered a unified Silver layer that reconciled disparate provincial data streams. This allowed the client to finally compare “apples to apples” across national sales, pricing, and inventory.
  • Modular Engineering: Introduced a generic notebook definition process and reusable function libraries. This moved the project away from “one-off scripts” toward a scalable, modular framework.
  • CI/CD & Governance: Implemented Git-based version control and a formal CI/CD deployment process. I transitioned the team from “coding in PROD” to a professional release management lifecycle.
  • Cost-Efficient Orchestration: Leveraged existing Tidal licenses to manage complex dependencies, ensuring high data availability without the Synapse overhead.

The Business Outcome

  • Estimated 85% Infrastructure Savings: Transitioned from a $14k/month fixed cost to a consumption-based Databricks model (projected at ~$1,500–$2,000/month).
  • Board-Ready Analytics: Delivered a high-integrity “Gold Layer” for key provinces, providing the executive team with reliable competitive intelligence to drive market strategy.
  • Internal Capability Transfer: Established the architectural foundation and deployment pipelines so effectively that the internal team was able to assume full ownership, reducing the long-term need for external spend.

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