Introduction

An Indian MNC's global operations required compliance reporting aligned with CDP, GRI, and upcoming CSRD standards. Existing Phase 1 of the data lake captured limited Scope 1 & 2 emissions from select plants, but gaps remained: lack of integration across 19 global plants, inability to capture Scope 3 emissions (value-chain related), and limited data governance, discoverability, and automated compliance reporting.

• Integrate up to 4 source systems (SAP, Enablon, Excel, etc.).

• Build ~50 medium-complexity data pipelines.

• Incorporate ~100 KPIs for compliance reporting.

• Implement governance features: data lineage, cataloging, access control, and quality checks.

• Ensure CI/CD enablement, automated testing, and project tracking.

• Handling heterogeneous data sources across 19 plants globally.

• Integrating and validating Scope 3 emissions, which cover both upstream and downstream activities.

• Maintaining compliance-ready quality and traceability while scaling for large datasets.

• Multi-layered architecture (Bronze–Silver–Gold) ensuring data quality and transformation readiness.

• Automated pipelines (~50) using PySpark/SQL with error handling, modular design, and version control.

• Data Governance Framework with lineage, cataloging, automated quality validation, and role-based access.

• Compliance Reporting Engine generating CDP & GRI-aligned outputs with KPI dashboards.

• Driven delivery (Agile sprints, CI/CD pipelines, automated tests, audit trails) for predictable, high-quality rollouts.

 Technological Framework

Why these technologies?

Azure Data Factory with Databricks Auto Loader enables continuous, incremental ingestion from SAP, Enablon, and Excel sources ensuring the data lake stays current without manual intervention across 19 global plants.

Why this Setup?

A medallion architecture (Bronze–Silver–Gold) with Unity Catalog governance ensures data progresses from raw ingestion to compliance-ready, audit-traceable KPI outputs — with role-based access enforced at every layer.

Why this Setup?

Integrating SAP, Enablon, and Excel into a unified bronze ingestion layer eliminates the manual data collation that previously made compliance reporting time-consuming and error-prone across 19 global plants.

Takeaway

Zapcom built a scalable sustainability data lake for an Indian MNC's 19 global plants — expanding emission coverage from partial Scope 1 & 2 to all 3 scopes, enabling CDP and GRI reporting, and achieving a 40% reduction in reporting cycle times.