Deploy an ESG Data Platform and Secure CSRD Compliance
Nexans, a global industrial leader (15,000 employees, >€6B revenue), places sustainable transformation at the heart of its value creation strategy through its E3 model (Economy, Engagement, Environment). Faced with the growing complexity of European Taxonomy requirements and the CSRD directive, the group encountered an imperative: structuring an extra-financial data chain offering a level of rigor, auditability, and reliability traditionally reserved for financial data.
To address this challenge and steer this strategic transformation, Nexans relied on MARGO. Acting as a technology consulting and delivery partner, MARGO orchestrated the insourcing of the reporting system and deployed a unified data platform, natively embedding sustainability into the group's overall business performance.
| Strategic Indicator | Result Obtained |
|---|---|
| Compliance & Auditability | 100% guaranteed alignment (European Taxonomy, CSRD) with validation of Traceable Audit Trails (PAT) by statutory auditors. |
| Time-to-Market | Accelerated delivery in 5 months with a commitment to results on the platform deployment. |
| Financial Performance | €120k in annual savings secured from production launch thanks to the termination of outsourcing services. |
| Governance & Sovereignty | 100% autonomy transferred to internal teams, regaining absolute control over their data and calculation engines. |
The Challenge: Mastering Regulatory Risk and Restoring Data Sovereignty
Like financial institutions subject to SFDR directives, major industrial groups indeed face a regulatory wall demanding impeccable management of their data assets. Initially, Nexans relied on a manual environmental reporting process outsourced to a third party.
This outsourced architecture exposed the organization to three major systemic risks:
- A risk of non-compliance and opacity: inability to instantly provide the Traceable Audit Trails (PAT) required by external auditors.
- Operational inertia: rigidity of calculation engines in the face of rapidly evolving European directives.
- Value attrition: recurring operating costs without building a sustainable internal technological asset.
Faced with these constraints, Nexans' Sustainability & Corporate Transformation department needed to closely align Business, Finance, and IT functions to insource this critical chain. Consequently, the challenge went beyond mere compliance: it was about designing a governed infrastructure capable of consolidating heterogeneous data distributed globally while creating a sustainably valuable technological foundation.
The MARGO Solution: Sovereign Data Platform, Governance, and AI-Readiness
It is precisely to address this dual challenge of compliance and performance that MARGO designed and executed a tailored cloud architecture. The solution is based on a multi-source Data Platform combined with a configurable calculation engine, offering total control to CSR and Finance departments.
To ensure the longevity of this foundation, this architecture deploys the most advanced engineering standards:
- Distributed computing and scaling: business rules modeling via Python and high multi-source volume processing with Azure Databricks.
- AI-Ready Foundation and Governance: strict standardization of ESG flows creates a healthy and auditable data foundation. This architectural prerequisite is essential to envisage future advanced use cases (predictive carbon footprint modeling, integration of generative AI agents for document querying) without rebuilding the infrastructure.
- Persistence and business accessibility: deployment of an intuitive React application for operational staff, backed by the power of Cosmos DB.
- Industrialization (CI/CD): deployment automation using Infrastructure as Code (IaC) via Azure DevOps, ensuring bank-grade robustness in production.
Execution Excellence: Securing Delivery in Critical Environments
Beyond the technical solution, leading complex data projects under tight regulatory constraints demands an executive methodology combining velocity with strict risk management. The success of this transformation rests on three operational pillars:
1. Commitment to Results
The project was structured as an accelerated fixed-price Delivery over a strict 5-month window. This model provides executive management with total visibility: budget control, strict milestone compliance, and assumed responsibility for deliverable quality.
2. Strict RACI & Governance
The integration of a MARGO Delivery Manager working closely with Nexans decision-makers helped establish seamless governance. MARGO technology squads and Nexans experts operated within a rigorous RACI matrix to unblock obstacles and secure decisions.
3. Data Quality "by design"
The architecture natively integrates automated validation mechanisms within each data pipeline. This certified integrity across the entire chain guarantees the accuracy of sales alignment reports during external audits.
Replicable Expertise for Highly Regulated Sectors
Building on these results, the engineering deployed for Nexans demonstrates MARGO's proven ability to secure critical data architectures well beyond industry:
- Sustainable Finance & Insurance (SFDR, NFRD, BCBS, Solvency II): design of auditable calculation engines for portfolio alignment and prudential risk reporting.
- Industry & Energy: structuring complex international data flows while maintaining legacy system interoperability.
- Sovereignty & Cybersecurity: deployment of sovereign Cloud architectures (IaC) complying with the strictest security standards (SecNumCloud, DORA).
Turn Your Regulatory Constraints into Performance Drivers
Ultimately, insourcing a heavy regulatory process proves to be a powerful driver of operational excellence. By combining strategic vision with execution rigor, Nexans turned a European constraint into a sovereign data platform ready for future technological challenges.
Why engage a specialized partner for Data Delivery in a regulated environment?
MARGO combines engineering expertise inherited from high-criticality environments (Market Finance, Insurance) with tailored execution models. We design scalable Data Platforms that guarantee strict compliance (CSRD, Taxonomy) while generating a measurable operational ROI (lower operating costs, faster reporting).
How to prepare an ESG Data Platform for Artificial Intelligence use cases?
AI demands robust foundations. The architecture must rely on strict standards from Day 1: decoupling storage and compute, automating deployments (IaC), and rigorous flow governance. This technological foundation then makes it possible to connect AI use cases (machine learning, generative AI) to reliable, labeled, and secure data.
What are the benefits of insourcing when facing a regulatory wall?
Insourcing means restoring the company's sovereignty over its most valuable asset. The intervention of a partner like MARGO brings the technological seniority (Azure, Databricks) needed to build the platform, while guaranteeing a comprehensive knowledge transfer to our clients' teams, thereby eliminating any long-term external dependency.
How is the expertise deployed at Nexans replicable in other highly regulated sectors?
MARGO historically operates in the most demanding markets regarding compliance and flow criticality (Market Finance, Banking, Insurance, Energy). The challenges solved at Nexans—reconciliation of heterogeneous multi-source data, production of defensible Traceable Audit Trails (PAT), and strict RACI governance—rest on identical engineering and Delivery principles to those required by financial (SFDR, DORA, Solvency II) or industrial regulators.
