Data & AI
Databricks
Accelerating Workflow-Driven Financial Reporting With Databricks Apps
How we delivered a governed, interoperable data platform that unlocked real-time workflows and cross-team insights in just 10 weeks.
The Challenge
A large Australian organisation faced a significant operational bottleneck: a complex, multi-agency reporting obligation that had grown beyond the capacity of its existing manual processes.
Reporting relied on a combination of spreadsheets, email-based validation cycles, and ad-hoc coordination across teams. This created delays, audit risk, and a heavy operational burden on analysts and executives alike.
The organisation’s data landscape spanned Azure Databricks, Oracle and Collibra, each serving different parts of the business. The immediate challenge was real, but so was the strategic opportunity: could a modern, cloud-native architecture not only solve the reporting problem, but also enable entirely new workflow-driven capabilities across the organisation?
Key requirements included:
- Workflow automation to eliminate manual, error-prone reporting cycles
- Cross-team data sharing without duplicating sensitive datasets
- End-to-end governance and lineage aligned to enterprise compliance policies
- Persona-based access so executives, analysts, and operational teams each had the right data at the right time
- A scalable blueprint to support future reporting obligations and business capability expansion
The Solution
TL Consulting was engaged to design and deliver a trusted, interoperable, and governed data platform with Databricks Apps at its core. The data platform would power not just reporting, but repeatable, workflow-driven business capabilities at scale.
The platform was built around four capability pillars:
- Databricks Apps & Azure Databricks: The analytics engine powering scalable data processing, workflow orchestration, and insight generation. Databricks Apps enabled persona-specific interfaces and automated workflows directly within the lakehouse, reducing the gap between data and action.
- Oracle Integration: Federated querying across existing enterprise data assets enabled hybrid analytics without requiring full migration, preserving existing investments while unlocking new value.
- Delta Sharing: Secure, real-time data sharing across teams and business units, without replicating sensitive datasets. This delivered a governed, single source of truth accessible to all authorised stakeholders.
- Collibra + Databricks Unity Catalog: Centralised governance, automated policy enforcement, end-to-end lineage, and regulatory assurance, fully integrated into the platform's data workflows.
TL Consulting combined advisory, architecture, and delivery expertise to ensure the platform addressed both the immediate reporting requirements and the longer-term strategic goal: a reusable, extensible pattern for workflow-driven capability enablement across the organisation.
The Outcomes
The organisation successfully validated a future-ready, workflow-driven data platform that delivered measurable results across speed, cost, governance, and user experience, all within a 10-week engagement.
Workflow Acceleration
Manual reporting cycles replaced with automated, governed pipelines, freeing analyst time and compressing time-to-insight by 10x.
Persona-Based Enablement
Tailored Databricks App experiences delivered for executive, analyst, and operational users. This made insights easier to find and act on.
Cost Optimisation
34% reduction in platform and pipeline costs through resource optimisation and elimination of redundant data duplication.
Compliance & Lineage
100% audit traceability achieved through automated governance controls, lineage tracking, and integrated policy enforcement.
Secure Data Sharing
Cross-team data sharing enabled via Delta Sharing ensured no sensitive data was replicated, with role-based access enforced at the platform layer.
Reusable Blueprint
A scalable, repeatable architecture pattern for future rollouts, demonstrating a modern data platform’s value beyond just reporting.
Beyond the immediate outcomes, the engagement demonstrated a compelling proof point: Databricks Apps can serve as the delivery layer for workflow-driven business capabilities, not just analytics infrastructure. By embedding automated workflows, governed data access, and persona-specific interfaces directly into the lakehouse, organisations can move from data platform to business capability platform faster, and at lower cost than traditional approaches.
Accelerate Your Business Workflows
As specialised Microsoft Solutions Partners, we can access subsidised Azure funding to accelerate your PoC, MVP, or migration.
Key Metrics
Technology Stack
Databricks Apps
Azure Databricks
Delta Sharing
Unity Catalog
Oracle DB
Collibra
Azure Cloud
Accelerate Your Business Workflows
As specialised Microsoft Solutions Partners, we can access subsidised Azure funding to accelerate your PoC, MVP, or migration.
Accelerate Cloud Adoption with Financial Accelerators
As specialised Microsoft Solutions Partners, we have access to the Azure Migrate and Modernize & Azure Accelerate offerings, enabling us to secure subsidised incentive funding for Proof of Values/PoCs, MVPs and migrations to further enable your business. This funding catalyst, combined with our expertise, accelerates your delivery model with TL Consulting at it’s core.
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