Building the data foundation for a centralized financial data warehouse

THE CLIENT

A San Francisco-based media and entertainment company with over $1.15 billion in annual revenue needed to bring structure and governance to fragmented financial data spread across licensing and rights management systems, royalty applications, and internal data warehouses.

THE OUTCOME

A comprehensive Financial Data Warehouse blueprint was delivered, consolidating fragmented financial data across more than 60 data feeds into a structured, SOX-compliant architecture. The organization established a clear path from quarterly batch reporting cycles to daily and near real-time refresh capability, with audit-ready governance controls and a scalable foundation for future reporting and analytics use cases.

WHY WAS IT DIFFICULT

Financial data was distributed across rights management platforms, licensing databases, royalty applications, and internal data warehouses used across departments. No centralized architecture existed to align deals, titles, contracts, and royalties. Limited automation and scalability constrained the organization’s ability to meet accounting, audit, and compliance demands, and reporting had historically depended on slow quarterly cycles.

THE ENGINEERING JOURNEY

Cross-functional stakeholder discovery was conducted to identify critical data elements and business reporting needs, informing ingestion design and data model alignment. Attribute mappings were completed across more than 60 data feeds representing deals, rights, royalties, revenue, contracts, and internal warehouses. Detailed Technical Specifications were created covering ingestion and transformation layers based on a Medallion architecture with embedded SOX compliance controls. A phased implementation plan was developed with defined milestones, ownership, and timelines, and the FDW architecture was designed to support near real-time refresh, audit readiness, and scalable integration of future data sources.

KEY DECISIONS

A Medallion architecture was selected to provide clear separation between raw, cleansed, and aggregated data layers, enabling both operational reporting and compliance use cases within the same foundation. SOX-aligned controls including change management, sign-off processes, data lineage, reconciliation, batch controls, and segregation of duties were embedded into the architecture design rather than added as post-implementation overlays.

MEASURABLE IMPACT

• Daily and near real-time refresh: Architecture designed to shift from quarterly batch cycles to agile operational and business reporting
• Audit-ready foundation: SOX-aligned controls including data lineage, reconciliation, and role-based access embedded in the design
• Scalability established: Foundation built to integrate additional sources and support revenue recognition, content accounting, and audit readiness goals
• 60+ data feeds mapped: Comprehensive attribute mapping completed across all financial data domains