The consequences were predictable. Errors crept in wherever data was entered or updated by hand. Cross-team coordination slowed to a crawl because information lived in siloes. And the moments that mattered most, namely when a license was approaching renewal or reaching end-of-life, were exactly the moments when visibility was hardest to achieve. By the time a stakeholder identified a customer nearing termination, the window for a productive conversation had often already closed.
The organization needed more than a cleaner spreadsheet. It needed a foundation capable of supporting proactive, data-driven license management at scale, with consistent governance, self-service access, and the ability to act on the right information at the right time. That meant moving away from manual processes entirely and building something that could grow with the business.
Solution
We designed and implemented a unified subscription management platform built on Azure services, Power Apps, and Power BI, with a data architecture structured to turn fragmented source files into governed, business-ready intelligence.
The foundation is a medallion layering approach built on Azure Data Lake Storage. Raw data from the organization’s multiple install base files and internal source systems is ingested using Azure Data Factory into a Bronze layer, preserving the original records in full fidelity. That data is then standardized into a Silver layer, where inconsistencies are resolved and schemas are aligned. From there, it is modeled into a Gold layer mapped to the OSC data model, making it ready for consumption across reporting and operational tools.
Databricks serves as the core processing engine throughout, handling data merging, transformation, and the creation of a common data model for subscription data. Databricks SQL connects the Gold layer directly to a Power Apps interface, where users can view and modify live customer and license records. User-created and user-modified inputs are stored separately from system data, preserving both auditability and restore capability without complicating the primary data pipeline.
For reporting, Power BI dashboards connect directly to Databricks views, giving stakeholders self-service access to subscription data. The platform delivers five generic reports alongside three specific reports covering Supplier, Budget, Recharging, and Validation use cases. Comprehensive documentation, including data dictionaries, technical design documents, and user guides for both Power BI and Power App, supports long-term adoption and maintainability as subscription volumes grow.
