Overview
Black Marble partnered with a leading employment charity to design and deliver a Proof of Concept (PoC) for a Master Data Pipeline, transforming how people data could be managed, accessed, and analysed across the organisation. The PoC demonstrated how multiple HR and business systems could be unified within a Microsoft Fabric Data Lake to enable real-time insights, improved data quality, and stronger governance.
The Challenge
The organisation faced several challenges common to large, distributed environments:
- Data fragmented across multiple systems
- Manual, time-intensive reporting processes
- Limited visibility across teams and services
- Inconsistent data structures and identity mapping
- Growing security and compliance requirements They required a low-risk way to validate whether a unified data platform could address these challenges before committing to full delivery.
The Approach
Black Marble delivered a focused PoC to demonstrate the feasibility and value of a modern data platform approach. Working closely with operational and IT stakeholders, we identified key data sources and priority use cases to ensure the PoC addressed real organisational needs. Key activities included:
- Integrating six core systems into a centralised data platform
- Designing automated, incremental data pipelines for daily ingestion
- Implementing transformation and identity mapping to ensure consistency
- Developing a set of Power BI dashboards to demonstrate real-time insights
- Enabling natural language data interrogation through Copilot The PoC was designed not only to prove technical capability, but also to demonstrate tangible user value.
Outcome
The PoC successfully demonstrated:
- A single, unified view of people data across multiple systems
- Automated data processing, removing reliance on manual reporting
- Real-time dashboards providing both operational and strategic insights
- Improved accessibility to data through intuitive interfaces and natural language queries
- Secure and auditable data handling aligned with ISO9001 and ISO27001 standards
Impact
The PoC provided the organisation with clear, evidence-based confidence in a scalable data platform approach. It enabled informed decision-making regarding future investment, significantly reducing delivery risk and establishing a strong foundation for a full production implementation.
Innovation
The engagement showcased several key innovations:
- Unified Data Access: Bringing disparate systems into a single, coherent platform
- Automated Insight Generation: Enabling near real-time reporting and analysis
- User-Led Analytics: Empowering stakeholders to explore data independently
- Embedded Security: Strong governance through encryption, role-based access, and auditability
- Scalable Foundation: A platform-ready architecture for future expansion
Conclusion
Through the delivery of a focused Proof of Concept, Black Marble enabled the client to move from uncertainty to clarity, demonstrating the value of a unified data platform while minimising risk. This approach reflects our broader commitment to delivering user-centred, scalable solutions that combine technical excellence with measurable business value.
