Data & Analytics
Data Platform
One trusted home for your data, with its history intact.
Most reporting problems are really data problems. The numbers live in several systems, each with its own version of the truth, that someone spends days stitching together before anyone can make a decision.
A data platform brings that data into one governed place, cleans it once and keeps it there for everyone to use. Built properly, it also keeps the history your operational systems throw away, which is what makes reporting trustworthy, integration with AI and real forecasting possible.
Your systems remember the present, not the past
Operational systems are designed to record how things stand right now. When an order changes status, a client moves stage or a price is updated, the old value is usually overwritten and the story of how it got there is lost.
We design data platforms to capture those changes as they happen and preserve them. That turns a snapshot into a full history of how your business actually runs: how long each stage takes, where work gets stuck, what tends to happen before a customer leaves and whether any of it is changing. That history is the difference between reporting what happened and understanding why.
What a data platform delivers
One version of the truth
Defined once and used by every report, analyst and AI tool.
Data from every system in one place
Including platforms outside Microsoft.
History that survives
So you can analyse trends and lifecycles rather than snapshots.
Governance and security
Control over who sees what, without slowing people down.
A foundation for AI
Conversational intelligence and forecasting are only as good as the data beneath them.
Room to grow
New systems can be added without rebuilding what is already there.
How we build it
Every platform is shaped by discovery, as the right design depends on your systems, data volumes and ambitions. Where a client needs a proven standard, we use the Circyl Landing Zone.
Step 1
Ingest
Data arrives from each source system as it is, using Azure Data Factory and native connectors, so nothing is lost on the way in.
Step 2
Clean and conform
Databricks matches customers, products and dates across systems and captures changes over time.
Step 3
Shape it for the business
A curated layer of trusted, business-ready data, organised around how you think about your organisation.
Step 4
Serve it through Microsoft Fabric
The curated layer is mirrored into Fabric to power semantic models, Power BI reporting and AI.
This layered approach, often called a medallion architecture, means each stage has one job and problems can be traced back to their source. Our data consultants work end to end, from engineering the pipelines to modelling the data and building the reports, so the person who understands where a number came from is the same person who designed how it is presented.
Fabric or Databricks?
This is one of the questions we are asked most often, and the honest answer is that it depends on what you need the platform to do. In our standard pattern we use both, each for what it does best.
Microsoft Fabric
Strongest at
Bringing storage, transformation and Power BI together in one managed service
Best fit when
Your estate is Microsoft-centred and reporting is the main goal
Running it
Simpler to administer, with capacity-based licensing
Cloud
Microsoft only
Databricks
Strongest at
Large-scale data engineering, data science and machine learning
Best fit when
Data volumes are large, pipelines are complex or advanced analytics matters
Running it
More control and flexibility, with more to manage
Cloud
Azure, AWS and Google Cloud
For smaller estates, a well-designed Azure SQL Database is sometimes all that is needed, and we will say so when it is.
We practise what we preach
Circyl’s own reporting runs on the platforms we recommend. Data from Dynamics 365 and Zoho flows into Azure SQL Database, is shaped into a star schema and feeds a governed Power BI model refreshed eight times a day. Nominated members of our team interrogate it through Claude and Copilot to see where margin is slipping and which clients need attention.
The stack behind it
Industrial-strength data engineering and machine learning, governed through Unity Catalog Secure cloud infrastructure underneath it all, with your data hosted in the UK or EEA Reliable, scheduled movement of data from your systems into the platform A managed database for smaller estates or specific workloads A unified analytics platform that brings data, models and reporting together
Databricks
Microsoft Azure
Microsoft Azure Data Factory
Microsoft Azure SQL Database
Microsoft Fabric
Sound familiar?
We tend to be the right call when:
Stitched together by hand
Reports are assembled from several systems before anyone can decide anything.
Several versions of the truth
Different teams bring different numbers to the same meeting.
No history
You can see where things stand today but not how they got there.
Not ready for AI
You want AI and forecasting, but the data underneath is not ready for it.
Some of these have names. If one is hitting home, this is where it leads:
What it unlocks
Get the foundations right and this is what becomes possible:
Conversational Intelligence
Trusted, connected data that becomes a digital version of your business, ready to interrogate.
See the gain →Business Foresight
A clean history deep enough to forecast what is coming.
See the gain →Autonomous Operations
A shared source of truth that systems can act on directly.
See the gain →It rarely stops at the data platform
A real solution usually pulls in more than one of our skills. We will not steer you towards one product over another, we build what the process needs.
We have done this before, see what our clients say
Read the latest thoughts from our team
Start with a conversation
Tell us what you need to know and where the data lives today. We will give you an honest view of what it would take to get there and whether Fabric, Databricks or something simpler is the right fit.
Book a Call
Or call 03333 209 969 · enquiries@circyl.co.uk