CASE STUDY | GLOBAL MARINE TRANSPORTATION COMPANY
Marine Transportation
Enterprise Data Strategy & Governance Roadmap
INDUSTRY
Marine Transportation
Data Strategy
Data Governance
BI & Analytics Modernization
SOLUTION AREA
Azure
PowerApps & Power BI
Databricks
TECHNOLOGY
The Challenge
A leading marine transportation company needed to modernize its data foundation to support safer, more efficient vessel operations. Fragmented systems, inconsistent reporting, and failed governance attempts were preventing the business from making data-driven decisions. Data Elephant delivered a unified data architecture and governance roadmap that rebuilt trust, aligned stakeholders, and accelerated the organization’s shift toward a modern analytics ecosystem.
Rapid organizational changes and growing operational complexity exposed gaps in the company’s data environment. Business teams lacked confidence in the central data group, key datasets suffered from quality issues, and reporting was spread across multiple tools with no single source of truth. Previous governance efforts had stalled, leaving leaders without a clear plan to modernize data capabilities.
Key challenges included significant data quality issues, a highly fragmented reporting landscape with redundant tools and a lack of self-service, prior failed governance initiatives with no sustained ownership or adoption, and a lack of a unified, enterprise-wide roadmap outlining architecture, governance, use case prioritization, and customized operating models.
The Data Elephant Difference
Data Elephant was selected as the client’s strategic data strategy partner due to our local and Canadian presence, deep data governance and strategy experience, along with transportation industry expertise.
Our team applied a structured yet highly collaborative approach that connected business needs with technical realities. Through in-depth stakeholder engagement, we built trust and surfaced the root causes behind data quality issues, reporting fragmentation, and stalled governance efforts. Our dual-track methodology, combining governance maturity assessment with a deep architecture and use-case review, ensured the future-state model and recommendations provided were practical, aligned, and business-led. Supported by a multidisciplinary team across architecture, strategy, and governance, we delivered a roadmap that the organization could confidently adopt and execute along with detailed breakdowns of each initiative’s efforts, complexities, risks, budget requirements, and action plans.
Architectural guidance for Databricks Lakehouse migration including Unity Catalog, Medallion Architecture and scalable AI/ML capabilities.
Enterprise roadmap covering 30+ initiatives across 6 domains for the coming 8-16 months for Governance, Platform, Reporting, Ingestion & GenAI.
Governance framework & operating model along with Finance-driven Pilot Use Case identification to operationalize governance and drive value.
Clear Tooling & Reporting Strategy to reduce fragmentation and increase trust through semantic modelling and BI/GenAI interface definition.
Industry-specific use case prioritization for AI & GenAI Enablement to position the client for responsible and value-driven AI in 2026.
The Outcome
This engagement equipped the organization with a clear, actionable roadmap that strengthens data trust, accelerates modernization, and unlocks long-term enterprise value. They are now positioned to deliver trusted insights, scale analytics and fully leverage their modern data platform investments.
Results at a Glance
IMPROVED DATA TRUST
A plan that restores confidence in enterprise reporting and enables innovation
VISIBILITY & TRUST
End-to-end data lineage through Unity Catalog and Collibra
REDUCED COMPLEXITY
A refined architecture to streamline platforms and lower long-term operating costs
PATH TO AI
Architecture, governance and semantic model trequired to safely scale AI and ML initiatives
AGILE ADOPTION
Agile intake/ prioritization framework to remove bottlenecks and improve transparency
