Data Practice

Data platforms built to deliver value, not to be rebuilt

Forty percent of data engineering teams spend more than half their time fixing data quality issues rather than building new capabilities. BCS data platform setup engagements deploy deKorvai quality gates, Symphony orchestration, and Anugal access governance as part of the build, so the platform operates correctly from the first production day.

Reactive Engineering
40%

of data teams spend over half their time on pipeline fixes rather than new capability delivery

Pipeline Quality Cost
$3M

monthly cost of poor data pipeline quality in mid-market enterprises

Cloud Spend Waste
32%

average cloud infrastructure spend wasted in ungoverned data environments

How BCS Approaches Data Platform Setup

Three things BCS does before every other consultancy starts building

Most delivery programmes begin at the solution layer. BCS begins at the evidence layer, measuring what exists before proposing what to build. That sequence is what separates recommendations with a measurable outcome from plans that look credible at presentation and fail in execution.

01

Measure before designing

deKorvai quality baseline established before any architecture decision is made. Every recommendation is grounded in measured evidence from the current data estate, not assumptions from stakeholder interviews.

02

Automate from the first sprint

Symphony automation scope identified and embedded in the delivery roadmap during the engagement itself, not proposed as a separate follow-on programme after delivery concludes.

03

Govern from day one

Anugal access governance and data classification policies are designed as part of the solution architecture and active from the first production dataset, not retrofitted after the platform is in use.

Why Platforms Fail

3 reasons enterprise data platform builds underdeliver

Data platform failures follow a consistent pattern. The technical choices are rarely the primary cause. The root causes are in what was not established before the build began.

01 — Root Cause

Platform architecture chosen before data quality is measured

Platforms designed for clean, structured, high-volume data inherit all the quality issues that exist in the source estate at the point of first ingestion. Data quality remediation then happens inside the platform at a cost that exceeds the original build budget. The platform architected for analytics serves as a data cleansing environment for the first year of operation.

02 — Root Cause

Pipeline deployment is manual, making operations reactive from go-live

Data pipelines deployed without automated deployment governance accumulate configuration drift immediately. Each manual deployment introduces small variations that compound over months until the pipeline estate is too fragile to change without unplanned downtime. Operations teams that inherit a manually deployed pipeline estate spend the majority of their time on incidents rather than improvements.

03 — Root Cause

Cost governance added after the cloud bill arrives, not at build

Data platforms provisioned without cost allocation tagging, budget alert policies, and resource lifecycle governance produce the first surprise cloud bill within 60 days of go-live. Retrofitting cost governance into a running platform requires compute downtime and architectural changes that would have cost a fraction of their remediation price if built in at setup.

Business Outcomes

What the data platform setup engagement delivers

Platform architecture matched to the actual data estate

Architecture is designed against a deKorvai quality baseline measuring real data volumes, quality levels, and ingestion patterns, not vendor-demonstration assumptions.

Symphony-deployed pipelines with version-controlled infrastructure

Every pipeline deploys through a Symphony-orchestrated sequence — validate, stage, test, promote — with infrastructure-as-code, eliminating configuration drift from the first deployment.

deKorvai quality gates enforced at every ingestion boundary

Data failing quality checks is quarantined and escalated at each ingestion point rather than silently promoted to contaminate downstream reports and models.

Data platform setup outcomes

Cost governance and allocation wired in at build, not retrofitted

Cost allocation tagging, budget alerts, and resource lifecycle governance are configured at build so the first cloud bill arrives with full visibility rather than triggering a retrospective cost programme.

Anugal-governed access model from day one of platform operation

Role-based access, domain permissions, and time-bound external access are configured at build, with build-phase access revoked at go-live rather than discovered in a later review.

Operations team inherits runbooks, not a platform that needs documenting

Symphony runbooks covering monitoring, alerting, restarts, and incident response are built and tested before handover, so operations teams inherit a platform they can run immediately.

Engagement Methodology

How BCS builds a data platform that operates from day one

BCS platform setup engagements follow five phases that move from assessment through to a production-ready platform with quality gates, orchestration, and access governance active before the first business dataset arrives.

01

Assessment & Architecture

Profile the existing environment, define target architecture, select platform components, and scope the build programme against the data volumes, integration patterns, and quality requirements of the specific organisation.

02

Infrastructure Provisioning

Provision the target cloud or hybrid infrastructure with Symphony-orchestrated deployment scripts. Security groups, network configuration, IAM policies, and cost governance controls are applied from the initial provisioning run.

03

Pipeline Build and Quality Gates

Build ingestion, transformation, and serving pipelines with deKorvai quality gates at each stage. Pipeline failures are routed to resolution workflows rather than silently corrupting downstream data.

04

Access Governance Configuration

Define Anugal access policies aligned to data classification and business role. Access controls are active from the first dataset loaded, not configured after the platform is in use.

05

Handover and Operational Baseline

Establish Symphony runbooks for routine platform operations, complete platform documentation, and hand over to the operational team or BCS managed service with a defined quality and performance baseline in place.

Capabilities

What the platform setup engagement covers

BCS delivers data platform setup across the full technology stack, from architecture design through to production-ready infrastructure with governance, quality, and operational automation in place at go-live.

Azure Synapse Analytics

Architecture, build, and pipeline deployment for Azure Synapse Analytics environments. Lake database configuration, dedicated SQL pool sizing, Synapse Link for SAP, and integration with Azure Data Factory and Databricks.

AWS Redshift and Data Lake

Redshift cluster architecture, S3 data lake layer design, Glue ETL pipeline setup, and Lake Formation governance configuration. Serverless and provisioned deployment depending on the workload profile.

GCP BigQuery and Dataflow

BigQuery dataset architecture, slot reservation model, Dataflow pipeline design, and Looker integration. Storage and compute separation for cost-optimal analytics at scale on Google Cloud Platform.

SAP Datasphere

SAP Datasphere space design, semantic layer modelling, replication flow configuration from S/4HANA and ECC, and federation setup for hybrid analytics environments alongside non-SAP cloud data platforms.

SAP BW and BW/4HANA

SAP BW architecture design, InfoObject and DataStore Object modelling, BW/4HANA migration planning, and hybrid SAP analytics configuration alongside SAP Analytics Cloud and Datasphere.

Data Lakehouse Architecture

Open table format implementation (Delta Lake, Apache Iceberg, Apache Hudi) on cloud storage with Databricks, Spark, or cloud-native query engines. Single data layer combining batch and streaming workloads.

Symphony Pipeline Deployment

All pipeline deployments orchestrated through Symphony, with version-controlled infrastructure-as-code, automated testing gates, staged promotion across environments, and rollback capability at every release stage.

deKorvai Quality Gates

Automated data quality checks configured at every ingestion boundary: raw zone intake, cleansing layer promotion, and serving layer release. Quality failures quarantined and escalated before downstream consumption.

Platform Cost and Access Governance

Cost allocation tagging, budget policies, and resource lifecycle governance are built at platform setup. Anugal-governed data access roles are configured from day one. Cost and access visibility is available from the first production workload, not the first surprise bill.

BCS Platforms

The platforms embedded in the data platform from the first day of operation

Platform Provisioning and Go-live Automation

Symphony

Symphony orchestrates data platform provisioning sequences, environment configuration, and go-live validation across infrastructure, pipeline, and security layers. The platform is handed over as a governed, automated environment rather than a documented build.

  • Infrastructure provisioning orchestration across compute, storage, and network layers
  • Environment configuration sequencing enforcing dependency order at every stage
  • Go-live validation execution confirming platform readiness before user access
  • Runbook automation embedded in the platform at handover, not added later
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Platform Configuration Validation

deKorvai

deKorvai validates platform configuration at each setup stage, detecting drift between what was specified and what is deployed. Pre-go-live validation catches configuration errors before users and pipelines depend on the environment.

  • Configuration drift detection between specification and deployed platform state
  • Pre-go-live validation confirming all layers match the agreed baseline
  • Database and schema integrity verification before pipeline onboarding
  • Post-setup configuration reporting as the platform acceptance evidence package
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Platform Access Design and Governance

Anugal

Anugal designs and implements the access model for the new data platform from day one, ensuring the right roles, permissions, and governance controls are in place before any data is loaded.

  • Data platform role and permission design aligned to governance requirements
  • Access control implementation across all platform layers at go-live
  • Sensitive data access policy enforcement from the first day of operation
  • Access governance framework handed over as ongoing platform operating procedure
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Why BCS

What makes BCS different from every other data platform partner

BCS has built data platforms on Azure, AWS, GCP, SAP Datasphere, and SAP BW/4HANA for enterprise clients in manufacturing, financial services, healthcare, and retail. The difference between a BCS-built platform and a standard delivery is the operational baseline on day one.

Why BCS for Data Platform Setup

Quality governance built in, not bolted on

deKorvai quality gates are implemented as part of pipeline construction. The platform the business receives has quality governance embedded in its architecture, not scheduled for a follow-on workstream.

SAP and cloud from a single build team

BCS engineers build SAP Datasphere, BW/4HANA, and cloud data platforms within the same engagement. Cross-platform integration is handled without a seam between specialist teams.

Symphony automation active at handover

Platform runbooks written during the build programme mean the operational team receives a system with defined automation behaviours, not a platform they need to learn to operate manually before automation is added.

Cost governance configured from infrastructure day one

Cloud spend controls, reserved capacity policies, and budget alerts are provisioned as part of the infrastructure build. Cost overruns caused by ungoverned resource consumption are prevented at the architecture layer.

Platform build informs the managed service

Where BCS provides ongoing data platform management, the build team hands over the architecture knowledge, quality baseline, and Symphony runbooks directly to the operations team, eliminating the ramp-up period that external managed service handovers generate.

Get Started

Ready to stop building platforms that need to be rebuilt?

BCS platform setup engagements deploy quality gates, orchestration, and access governance as part of the build, not as follow-on projects. Book a platform assessment to scope what a properly built data platform looks like for the current environment.