Logistics leader supercharges data processing with Azure Databricks, cutting costs by 25%

A leading North American logistics provider wanted to eliminate the friction caused by decades-old systems and fragmented data across its operations. With multiple business lines and millions of shipments managed each year, their technology stack could no longer keep pace with growing customer expectations.

The company needed a stronger, more seamless connection to their operational data. Information was scattered across multiple on-premises environments, making analysis slow and cumbersome. Each query had to be exported to Excel, manually cleaned, and reformatted before it could be shared, wasting valuable time and introducing opportunities for error.

They wanted to consolidate data management entirely within Azure Databricks, avoiding open-source tools, and provide simultaneous, company-wide access from a single, unified platform. The goal: one point of truth for all teams, with the ability to access, process, and analyze data in real time.

We designed a data architecture that balanced power, resilience, and ease of use. Built on the Medallion architecture, the solution organizes data into bronze, silver, and gold layers, enabling raw ingestion, refined processing, and ready-to-use datasets for analytics.

A cost-efficient data lake was implemented for compact storage, allowing data volume to grow over time without impacting performance. Databricks’ Unity Catalog provided a centralized, state-of-the-art system for managing and securing all data assets (tables, files, and machine learning models) across the Azure Databricks environment.

To support operational needs, data was replicated in PostgreSQL for quick, application-ready access. Security controls were built in to ensure users only access data appropriate to their role. The result is a high-availability, future-ready platform that allows the company to scale analytics and operations without the risk, delay, or complexity of moving data between systems.

With this unified, high-performance data foundation in place, the company is now positioned to scale confidently, innovate faster, and unlock even greater value from its data in the years ahead: