About

A leading global resources and manufacturing company operates across six continents with over 6,000 employees worldwide. The organisation is a vertically integrated producer of titanium-based materials used in industrial and consumer applications. With complex operations spanning mining, processing, and manufacturing, the business required a modern analytics environment to support better visibility, faster decision-making, and unified reporting across its global operations.

Challenge

The company’s Operations Information Systems (TOIS) and Finance teams faced ongoing challenges in managing, consolidating, and analysing critical performance data. Reporting was slow, fragmented, and heavily reliant on manual processes. Power BI reports frequently experienced latency issues, and maintaining Azure Data Factory (ADF) pipelines required significant effort.

Leadership recognised the need to modernise their data platform to support enterprise-scale analytics, forecasting, and governance. They required a future-proof solution that would:

  • Simplify data architecture and reduce dependence on multiple Azure components.

  • Improve report performance and refresh reliability.

  • Consolidate data from Planview, financial systems, and operational datasets into a governed environment.

  • Enable advanced analytics, trend analysis, and KPI visibility across finance, operations, and executive reporting.

Solution

AGER BI was engaged to design and implement a unified analytics environment leveraging Microsoft Fabric, transforming the company’s existing Azure ecosystem into a modern, scalable, and efficient data platform.

Strategic Fabric Migration

AGER BI assessed the existing Azure Data Factory (ADF) and Azure SQL workloads and developed a Fabric migration blueprint to streamline data management and reporting under one integrated platform.

Key migration activities included:

  • Rebuilding ADF pipelines using Fabric Dataflows Gen2 to unify data ingestion and transformation within Fabric Workspaces.

  • Migrating Azure SQL datasets into Fabric Lakehouses and Warehouses, reducing storage complexity and improving query performance.

  • Implementing Delta Lake storage for versioned, incremental data loads with improved reliability and traceability.

  • Establishing Fabric-native governance policies, including workspace roles, data lineage tracking, and sensitivity labelling.

Data Modelling and Integration

AGER BI developed a centralised semantic model within Fabric to serve as a single source of truth across all business domains.
Using Fabric’s integrated Power BI Direct Lake mode, data remained continuously available for analysis without needing scheduled refreshes, dramatically improving report performance and scalability.

Business rules were implemented directly in Fabric SQL endpoints and Dataflows, ensuring consistent KPI calculations across Finance, Projects, and Operations.

Reporting and Analytics Enablement

With the Fabric foundation in place, AGER BI rebuilt the organisation’s key Power BI reports to take advantage of Fabric’s Direct Lake performance layer and simplified data model connectivity.

Delivered dashboards included:

  • Finance: CAPEX/OPEX, forecasting, benefits tracking, and variance analysis.

  • Global Executive Meeting Reports: Portfolio summaries, cost and schedule variance, risk, and resource utilisation.

  • System Health Indicators: Real-time data quality and trend visualisation using snapshot data stored in Fabric Lakehouses.

  • Benefits Tracker: Re-engineered for improved performance, consistency, and automation.

Benefits

The Microsoft Fabric implementation transformed the organisation’s analytics ecosystem into a high-performance, unified, and future-ready data platform.

Key outcomes included:

  • Unified Platform Efficiency: Consolidated data pipelines, storage, and reporting under Fabric reduced maintenance complexity and licensing overhead.

  • Real-Time Analytics: Direct Lake mode eliminated data refresh delays, providing near-instant access to insights.

  • Improved Data Governance: Centralised workspace security, lineage tracking, and version control enhanced trust and compliance.

  • Scalability: Fabric’s modular design allows seamless integration with upcoming data products, AI models, and automation initiatives.

  • Business Value: Reports now refresh in seconds, forecasting accuracy increased, and reporting cycles were cut by over 70%.

By leveraging Microsoft Fabric, AGER BI delivered a cutting-edge, end-to-end data platform that empowers the client’s executives, finance teams, and operational leaders to make faster, data-driven decisions, with greater consistency, transparency, and scalability than ever before.