How Snowflake’s Data Cloud Transformed Sustainability Reporting in Mining Sector with Improved Data Accuracy and Accessibility

Snowflake’s Data Cloud is recognized by many as the best in the industry​.

In this post, we will understand how fast-tracked Snowflake migration and cloud computing helped a US Based Mining Corporation improve and optimize their sustainability reporting performance.

Sustainability Reporting is a well -entrenched practice especially in mining sector. Any lapses in complying with the sustainability regulations poses a significant threat to survival for the mining industry.  Mounting criticism from society, and adverse impact on the environment due to unregulated mining resulted in mining corporations taking the onus on themselves to publish sustainability reports and metrics on time, with better accuracy, improving compliance and demonstrated social responsibility.

On average, Sustainability Reports cover nearly 240 KPI/ per mining site, and there are about 30+ mining sites operated by our client, a name to reckon with in the mining industry.

Sustainability Reporting in mining covers various themes like Governance, Health and Safety, Human Rights, Waste Management, Water use efficiency, Emission metrics and Environment events including penalties paid to the government. Approximately 20 reports are used internally and last 13 years of data are referred to prepare the data for Sustainability reporting. Certain metrics in this report like NoX%, SoX% are derived calculations involving complex calculations, and vary by process area.

At the mining site, KPIs are collated in real-time and stored via custom front-end applications into a centralized data warehouse. Various reporting tools/technologies are leveraged for developing real-time dashboards/ sustainability reports for monitoring by Geography, by mining site, by process area etc.  These reports are subject to audits by government agencies, and any non-compliance or lapses will result in penalties

United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has published sourcebook wherein it has clearly emphasized the need for mining corporations in adhering to the performance standards laid down by the government (UNDP-Sustainable Development). The paradigm has shifted from the “Pollutee suffers” to the “Polluter pays” principle, emphasizing need for adhering to standards, and publishing the Sustainability reports to the general public.

Need of the Hour

• Early availability of Sustainability metrics for Corporate users for validation. i.e. 100% compliance with sustainability regulations
• 100% Data Accuracy – First time Right, Every time
• Improved User Interface experience of Sustainability Applications running on Teradata
• Accelerated data migration from Teradata to Snowflake

Solution

• Sustainability Applications running on Teradata were migrated to Snowflake leveraging Hexaware Amaze^TM for Data & AI platform for automated assessment, conversion, and validation during the Snowflake transformation
• Teradata DB objects, Hadoop tables, R Scripts, Macros were converted and migrated to snowflake
• Load data (one-time + on-going) from Teradata/Hadoop to Snowflake
• SAP Business Objects, PowerBI converted to consume data from Snowflake
• Re-wire downstream Sustainability applications to consume from Snowflake

 Outcome

Business Benefits of Hexaware Amaze^TM for Data & AI in the Snowflake Transformation

• 40% Reduction in Sustainability Reports (Business Objects) execution time
• 50% improvement in OLTP, and UI experience of Sustainability Applications
• 70% effort reduction vis-à-vis manual execution
• 50% reduction in TCO

Figure1: Sustainability Application – Improved user experience

Figure2: Business Objects Execution time

About Snowflake 

Snowflake delivers the Data Cloud — a global network where thousands of organizations mobilize data with near-unlimited scale, concurrency, and performance. Inside the Data Cloud, organizations unite their siloed data, easily discover and securely share governed data, and execute diverse analytic workloads. Wherever data or users live, Snowflake delivers a single and seamless experience across multiple public clouds. Snowflake’s platform is the engine that powers and provides access to the Data Cloud, creating a solution for data warehousing, data lakes, data engineering, data science, data application development, and data sharing.

Join Snowflake customers, partners, and data providers already taking their businesses to new frontiers in the Data Cloud. Snowflake.com