From Landing-Zone to Board-Pack: Real-Time Reporting on Microsoft Fabric

Shrivatsa Kajaria
May 24
20 min read

In an era where data is the new currency and agility the prime directive, the chasm between raw data and actionable insight remains a formidable challenge for many organisations. Traditional data architectures, often a patchwork of siloed systems, struggle to deliver the timely, comprehensive intelligence demanded by modern boardrooms. The latency inherent in these systems means strategic decisions are frequently based on lagging indicators, hindering an organisation's ability to react, adapt, and innovate at pace. Microsoft Fabric emerges as a transformative solution; a unified analytics platform designed to dismantle these silos and revolutionise the data lifecycle—from initial ingestion to executive-level reporting.

This report explores the journey from establishing a robust data landing-zone within Microsoft Fabric's OneLake to delivering real-time, board-pack-ready intelligence through Power BI. We delve into Fabric's integrated architecture, highlighting how its components synergise to overcome historical data management hurdles, foster unified governance, and significantly reduce integration complexity.

The vision is clear: a streamlined, efficient, and powerful data estate that empowers decision-makers with the clarity and speed required to navigate today's dynamic business landscape.

Achieving this transformation, however, demands more than just technology adoption; it requires strategic insight, deep technical expertise, and a collaborative partnership. Wiz Digital Services (WDS) is your catalyst for success with Microsoft Fabric. We bring a wealth of experience in data engineering, AI-powered automation, and cloud transformation, coupled with a proven methodology for de-risking adoption and accelerating time-to-value. This paper will illustrate how WDS partners with organisations to ignite rapid, responsible transformation, safeguarding their data assets while collaboratively evolving their capabilities to harness the full potential of Microsoft Fabric, ensuring they reach their next digital horizon with confidence and zero technical debt.

The Reporting Impasse in a Data-Driven World

The modern enterprise operates in an environment of unprecedented velocity and complexity. The imperative for data-driven decision-making has never been more acute; it is the bedrock of competitive advantage, operational efficiency, and strategic foresight. Senior leaders and boards of directors increasingly rely on comprehensive, accurate, and timely intelligence to navigate market shifts, capitalise on emerging opportunities, and mitigate risks. Yet, for many, the path from raw data to insightful board-pack remains fraught with obstacles, creating a significant reporting impasse.

The challenges are manifold and deeply rooted in the legacy of traditional data warehousing and business intelligence architectures. These systems, often developed organically over years, tend to comprise:

Data Silos: Information is frequently fragmented across disparate operational systems, departmental databases, and legacy warehouses. This lack of a unified view makes it extraordinarily difficult to achieve a single version of the truth, leading to conflicting reports and compromised decision quality.
Latency in Insights: Batch-oriented ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) processes, common in traditional setups, introduce significant delays. Data is often hours, if not days, old by the time it reaches a report, rendering it suboptimal for real-time operational adjustments or rapid strategic responses.
Complexity and Integration Overheads: Stitching together various point solutions for data ingestion, storage, processing, and visualisation creates a complex, brittle ecosystem. Maintaining these integrations is resource-intensive, diverts focus from value-added activities, and often results in escalating costs.
Governance Gaps and Compliance Risks: In a fragmented data landscape, enforcing consistent data governance, quality standards, and regulatory compliance (such as GDPR) becomes a Herculean task. This not only exposes the organisation to risk but also erodes trust in the data itself.
Scalability Constraints: As data volumes explode and analytical demands intensify, many traditional systems struggle to scale efficiently, leading to performance bottlenecks and an inability to support advanced analytics or AI-driven initiatives.

This reporting impasse means that board packs, the cornerstone of executive deliberation, are often compiled through laborious manual effort, drawing on stale data, and lacking the dynamic, interactive capabilities needed for deep exploration. The strategic dialogue suffers, and the organisation’s ability to truly leverage its data assets is fundamentally constrained.

It is against this backdrop that Microsoft Fabric arrives, not merely as an incremental improvement, but as a paradigm shift in how organisations approach their data estate.

Fabric offers a unified analytics platform, designed from the ground up to address these persistent challenges. By providing an integrated suite of services on a single, SaaS-based foundation, Fabric promises to break down silos, accelerate insights, simplify management, and embed governance throughout the data lifecycle. It represents an opportunity to move beyond the limitations of the past and to truly ignite a new era of data-driven agility and intelligence, empowering organisations to deliver insights at the speed the market demands. Wiz Digital Services stands ready to guide organisations through this pivotal transformation, ensuring that the promise of Fabric translates into tangible business value.

Decoding Microsoft Fabric: The Unified Analytics Platform

Microsoft Fabric represents a fundamental reimagining of the enterprise data analytics landscape. Launched as an evolution of Azure Synapse Analytics and Power BI, it is a comprehensive, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform that converges data integration, engineering, warehousing, real-time analytics, business intelligence, and data governance into a single, unified product. This is not merely a rebranding of existing services; Fabric is architected around a core principle: simplicity through unification, aiming to empower every data professional and business user with the tools they need, when they need them, without the traditional friction of integrating disparate systems.

At the heart of Fabric lies its lakehouse architecture, built upon OneLake. OneLake can be conceptualised as a "OneDrive for data"—a single, unified, logical data lake for the entire organisation. Unlike traditional models that often involve multiple storage accounts and complex data movement, OneLake provides a single copy of data (stored in the open Delta Lake format) that can be accessed and utilised by all of Fabric's various compute engines. This open format prevents vendor lock-in and promotes interoperability, a key tenet of modern data strategy. The beauty of this approach is that it eliminates data silos by design and significantly reduces data duplication and movement, which are major sources of cost, complexity, and latency.

Fabric's power is delivered through a suite of integrated experiences, all sharing OneLake as their native data store:

Data Factory: This experience provides a rich set of tools for data integration, enabling the creation of robust and scalable data pipelines. It supports over 200 native connectors to ingest data from a multitude of sources (on-premises, cloud, SaaS applications) and orchestrates complex ETL/ELT workflows with both code-free (Dataflows Gen2) and code-first (pipelines) approaches.
Synapse Data Engineering: Built for big data processing, this experience leverages Apache Spark. Data engineers can use familiar languages like Python (PySpark), Scala, and SQL to transform, cleanse, and enrich vast datasets stored in OneLake. Fabric's Spark runtimes are optimised for performance and integrate seamlessly with notebooks and other development tools.
Synapse Data Warehouse: Offering a traditional SQL-based warehousing experience, this component allows analysts and developers to query data in OneLake using T-SQL. It provides a familiar interface for relational analytics, supporting data warehousing workloads without requiring data to be moved from the lakehouse. This "lakehouse-first" SQL engine means that data engineers working with Spark and analysts working with SQL operate on the same data.
Synapse Real-Time Analytics: This engine, powered by the Kusto Query Language (KQL), is optimised for analysing observational data from logs, telemetry, and time-series sources. It enables high-throughput ingestion and complex analytical queries on streaming data, making it ideal for IoT scenarios, application monitoring, and operational intelligence.
Fabric Activator (Preview): This innovative component acts as a no-code data-driven alerting and action system. It allows users to define conditions based on data in OneLake (e.g., a Power BI measure, data from a KQL query) and trigger actions (like sending an email, starting a Power Automate flow, or alerting a Teams channel) when those conditions are met. This bridges the gap between insight and action.
Power BI: As the business intelligence and visualisation layer of Fabric, Power BI is more deeply integrated than ever. Its revolutionary Direct Lake mode allows Power BI reports to directly query data in OneLake (Delta/Parquet files) with performance that rivals traditional import mode, but without the need to copy or cache data into Power BI datasets. This delivers unprecedented speed and freshness for reporting, directly from the data lake.

The synergy between these components is Fabric's defining characteristic.

For instance, data ingested by Data Factory can be processed by Synapse Data Engineering (Spark), then structured for relational querying by Synapse Data Warehouse (T-SQL) and finally visualised in real-time by Power BI using Direct Lake mode—all operating on the same, single copy of data in OneLake. This unified approach brings several compelling benefits:

Reduced Integration Overhead: By eliminating the need to stitch together and maintain separate services for each part of the data lifecycle, Fabric significantly simplifies the data estate, reduces development time, and lowers operational costs.
Unified Governance and Security: With OneLake as the central repository, governance policies, security controls (like role-based access, row-level security, and column-level security), and data discovery (through integration with Microsoft Purview) can be applied consistently across all data and workloads. This addresses a major pain point of fragmented architectures.
Simplified Data Estate and Management: A single platform means a single management interface, a unified capacity model (F-SKUs), and a consistent user experience for diverse roles, from data engineers to business analysts. This fosters better collaboration and democratises data access.
Accelerated Time-to-Insight: The seamless flow of data between experiences, particularly with innovations like Direct Lake mode, dramatically reduces latency, enabling organisations to move closer to real-time decision-making.

Microsoft Fabric is not just a collection of tools but a cohesive ecosystem designed to modernise an organisation's entire data analytics pipeline.

It provides the foundational capabilities to ignite transformation, safeguard data integrity, and enable teams to collaborate more effectively, paving the way for a more evolved, intelligent, and agile enterprise. Wiz Digital Services possesses the deep expertise to help organisations navigate the adoption of Fabric, ensuring its powerful capabilities are harnessed to deliver maximum strategic impact.

The Journey: From Landing-Zone to Board-Pack with Fabric

The promise of Microsoft Fabric lies in its ability to streamline the entire data lifecycle, transforming raw, disparate data sources into polished, actionable intelligence ready for the boardroom. This journey, from establishing a robust "Landing-Zone" to delivering dynamic "Board-Packs," requires a methodical approach, leveraging Fabric's integrated capabilities at each stage.

Wiz Digital Services partners with organisations to architect and implement this journey, ensuring best practices are embedded from the outset.

1. Landing Zone in Fabric: The Foundation for Trustworthy Data

The first crucial step is the creation of a well-architected landing zone within OneLake. This is more than just a storage location; it's the initial ingestion point where raw data from various source systems (ERPs, CRMs, IoT devices, flat files, APIs) arrives. A thoughtfully designed landing zone is paramount for data quality, governance, and future scalability.

Importance of OneLake: OneLake's single, logical data lake structure simplifies this process significantly. Data lands in its native format, or a standardised raw format (e.g., Parquet, CSV), organised by source system, domain, or data sensitivity. This foundational organisation is key for discoverability and access control.
WDS Perspective on Best Practices:
- Data Ingestion with Data Factory: WDS advocates for leveraging Data Factory's extensive connector library and robust pipeline orchestration capabilities to automate ingestion. We focus on building resilient, auditable ingestion pipelines that handle schema drift and ensure data integrity from point of entry.
- Structuring for Consumption: While data may land raw, we design a layered approach within OneLake (often referred to as Bronze/Silver/Gold or Raw/Curated/Modelled layers). The landing zone typically represents the "Bronze" or "Raw" layer.
- Initial Governance and Metadata: Even at this early stage, WDS emphasises capturing essential metadata (source, frequency, ownership) and applying initial access controls. Fabric's integration with Microsoft Purview allows for early data scanning and classification, helping to identify sensitive data from the moment it lands. This proactive stance aligns with our Safeguard value, ensuring integrity from the core.

2. Transforming and Governing Data at Scale: Forging Business-Ready Assets

Once data is in the landing zone, the next phase involves transforming it into clean, conformed, and business-ready assets. This is where Fabric's powerful compute engines and governance tools come into play.

Fabric's Transformation Tools:

Synapse Data Engineering (Spark): For complex transformations, data cleansing, enrichment, and large-scale data processing, Spark within Fabric is the engine of choice. WDS data engineers leverage PySpark or Spark SQL to build efficient transformation logic, moving data from the raw layer to "Silver" (cleansed, conformed) and "Gold" (aggregated, business-specific models) layers within OneLake.
Synapse Data Warehouse (T-SQL) & Dataflows Gen2: For more straightforward transformations or for teams more comfortable with SQL or low-code tools, Fabric offers T-SQL capabilities directly on the lakehouse and the Power Query-based Dataflows Gen2. These can be used to refine data and build dimensional models.
Pipelines in Data Factory: Data Factory orchestrates these transformation jobs, ensuring dependencies are managed and processes run reliably.
Integrating Microsoft Purview for End-to-End Governance: True enterprise-grade analytics requires robust governance. Fabric's deep integration with Microsoft Purview is critical.
Data Discovery and Classification: Purview can scan data assets across OneLake and other Fabric experiences, automatically classifying sensitive data, and building a comprehensive data catalogue.
Data Lineage: Purview captures end-to-end lineage, from source systems through transformations in Fabric (Spark notebooks, Data Factory pipelines) to Power BI reports. This transparency is vital for impact analysis, troubleshooting, and regulatory compliance.
Data Quality and Stewardship: WDS helps organisations define data quality rules and establish data stewardship workflows, leveraging Purview's capabilities to monitor and manage data quality proactively. Our approach here embodies the Safeguard principle, providing authoritative protection and strategic counsel on data governance.
WDS’s Approach to Data Quality and Lineage: We believe that data quality is not an afterthought but an integral part of the transformation process. WDS implements data quality checks within transformation pipelines, logs quality metrics, and establishes processes for remediation. Clear lineage, facilitated by Purview, ensures that business users can trust the data they are consuming and understand its provenance.

3. Unlocking Real-Time Insights: The Power of Direct Lake and Semantic Models

With governed, business-ready data in OneLake, the focus shifts to delivering insights.

Fabric’s innovations here are game-changing for speed and agility.

Direct Lake Mode in Power BI: This is arguably one of Fabric's most impactful features for reporting. Direct Lake allows Power BI datasets to query Delta tables in OneLake directly, without importing or duplicating data.
Performance: It achieves performance comparable to Power BI's traditional Import mode but with the data freshness of DirectQuery. This means reports reflect the latest data in OneLake almost instantaneously.
Simplified Architecture: It eliminates the need for complex data movement into Power BI premium capacities or separate analytical stores just for reporting, reducing latency and operational overhead.
Building Effective Semantic Models: A well-designed semantic model (formerly Power BI dataset) is crucial. This model provides a business-friendly layer over the data, defining relationships, calculations (DAX measures), and hierarchies.
Consistency: WDS works with business stakeholders to define common business logic and KPIs within the semantic model, ensuring all reports and dashboards speak the same language. This promotes a single version of the truth.
Optimisation: We design semantic models for optimal performance with Direct Lake mode, considering data modeling best practices (star schemas, appropriate granularity).
Fabric's Capabilities for Real-Time Data Streaming and Analytics: For scenarios requiring truly real-time insights (e.g., IoT monitoring, live operational dashboards), Fabric’s Real-Time Analytics experience (using KQL) and Eventstream capabilities can ingest, process, and analyse streaming data. This data can then be surfaced in Power BI real-time dashboards or trigger alerts via Fabric Activator. This capability allows organisations to Ignite proactive responses based on live data feeds.

4. Delivering Board-Pack Ready Intelligence: From Data to Decisions

The final stage is the creation and delivery of compelling, actionable intelligence tailored for executive consumption.

Designing Impactful Power BI Dashboards and Reports: Board packs require more than just charts; they need to tell a story, highlight key trends, and facilitate strategic discussion.
Executive Focus: WDS specialises in designing Power BI content that is clean, concise, and aligned with executive KPIs. We focus on visual best practices to ensure clarity and impact.
Interactivity and Drill-Through: While board packs are often static, the underlying Power BI reports can offer interactivity and drill-through capabilities, allowing executives to explore data further if needed during discussions.
Automating Refresh and Distribution: Fabric and Power BI enable the automation of data refresh schedules, ensuring the board pack always reflects the latest available information. Distribution can be managed through Power BI apps, subscriptions, or secure sharing.
Ensuring Insights are Actionable and Drive Strategic Outcomes: The ultimate goal is to drive better decisions. WDS works with leadership teams to ensure that the insights delivered are not just informative but directly support strategic objectives and performance management. This Collaborative approach ensures the final output is truly fit for purpose.

The journey from Landing-Zone to Board-Pack with Microsoft Fabric, guided by Wiz Digital Services, transforms an organisation’s data from a passive repository into an active, strategic asset. It’s a journey that demands technical excellence, strategic vision, and a commitment to continuous Evolvement—all hallmarks of the WDS partnership.

The Wiz Digital Services Advantage:

Your Catalyst for Fabric Success

Adopting a transformative platform like Microsoft Fabric is more than a technological upgrade; it's a strategic imperative that can redefine an organisation's competitive edge.

However, realising Fabric's full potential—moving seamlessly from data landing-zones to actionable board-pack intelligence—requires expert guidance, deep technical acumen, and a partner committed to your success. Wiz Digital Services (WDS) is that partner, your catalyst for navigating the Fabric landscape and accelerating your journey to data-driven excellence.

Our approach is rooted in a profound understanding of both the technological intricacies of Fabric and the business outcomes our clients seek to achieve. We don't just implement software; we engineer solutions that deliver measurable value, aligning with our core principle of helping businesses reach their next digital horizon with confidence.

Deep Expertise Tailored to Fabric:

WDS brings a wealth of experience directly relevant to maximising your Fabric investment:

Data Engineering Excellence: Our teams possess deep expertise in designing and implementing robust data pipelines, transforming raw data into governed, analytics-ready assets within OneLake. We are adept with Fabric's Data Factory, Synapse Data Engineering (Spark), and Synapse Data Warehouse (T-SQL) capabilities, ensuring efficient and scalable data processing. This mirrors our track record where we've, for instance, successfully migrated over 10TB of data into modern lakehouse architectures for large enterprises, ensuring GDPR compliance and enabling real-time insights—a capability directly transferable to Fabric implementations.
AI-Powered Automation and Advanced Analytics: Fabric is increasingly infused with AI. WDS has a strong foundation in AI and machine learning, enabling us to help clients leverage Fabric's AI capabilities, including Copilots and the potential for custom AI model integration, to unlock deeper insights and automate complex analytical tasks.
Cloud Transformation and Modernisation: Fabric is a cloud-native SaaS platform. Our extensive experience in cloud strategy and migration ensures a smooth transition for organisations modernising their existing on-premises or disparate cloud data solutions to Fabric's unified environment. We've helped clients streamline complex product data management across multiple legacy systems (like SAP, NesSoft, Dynamics, and Hybris) by implementing modern Master Data Management solutions, an experience vital when consolidating data sources into Fabric.
Power BI and Business Intelligence Mastery: Delivering board-pack ready intelligence is the ultimate goal. WDS consultants are experts in Power BI, from designing efficient semantic models for Direct Lake mode to crafting impactful, executive-level dashboards and reports that drive strategic decision-making. We have a history of improving real-time insights and data consistency, leading to significantly better forecasting for our clients.

Our Commitment – Your Assurance:

The WDS engagement model is built on principles that de-risk your Fabric adoption and ensure sustainable success, reflecting our brand values:

Zero Technical Debt: We engineer solutions for tomorrow, not just for today. Our architectural choices and development practices are focused on creating scalable, maintainable, and future-proof Fabric implementations, avoiding the build-up of technical debt that can stifle future agility.
End-to-End Digital Transformation: We view Fabric as a cornerstone of broader digital transformation. WDS provides holistic guidance, from initial strategy and roadmap development through to implementation, optimisation, and ongoing evolution of your Fabric estate, ensuring it continuously adapts to your business needs.
Enterprise-Grade Security & Compliance: Data security and regulatory compliance are non-negotiable. WDS embeds robust security measures and governance frameworks within your Fabric deployment, leveraging Purview and Fabric's inherent security features to protect your data assets and meet compliance mandates like GDPR and CCPA. Our consultants provide the strategic counsel needed to navigate these complex requirements.
Agile & Client-Centric Approach: We believe in true partnership. WDS embeds with your teams, fostering a collaborative environment of co-creation and shared ownership. Our agile delivery methodology ensures flexibility, transparency, and rapid iteration, allowing us to adapt to evolving requirements and deliver value quickly. This human partnership ensures solutions are not just technically sound but also culturally aligned and readily adopted.

Accelerating Time-to-Value with WDS:

WDS offers flexible engagement models, from strategic consulting and project-based delivery to embedded teams, tailored to your specific needs.

Our established expertise allows us to:

Rapidly Design and Deploy Landing Zones: We expedite the foundational setup in OneLake.
Streamline Data Migration and Transformation: Our proven methodologies reduce the complexity and timeline for populating and processing data within Fabric. For example, our experience in migrating numerous source systems into consolidated data platforms for clients like those in online retail demonstrates our capability to handle complex data integration scenarios efficiently within Fabric.
Develop High-Impact Reporting Solutions Quickly: We accelerate the development of Power BI reports and dashboards, enabling faster access to critical business insights.

By partnering with Wiz Digital Services, you are not just acquiring a technology integrator; you are gaining a strategic ally dedicated to igniting provocative momentum in your data strategy.

We provide the authoritative protection and strategic counsel to navigate the complexities of Fabric, collaborate closely to build solutions that empower your teams, and foster a culture of relentless learning to ensure your data capabilities continuously evolve. We are your catalyst for transforming Microsoft Fabric's potential into your organisation's sustained competitive advantage.

Illustrative Use Cases: Fabric in Action with WDS

To demonstrate the transformative potential of Microsoft Fabric and the value Wiz Digital Services brings, let us consider a couple of scenarios, inspired by common industry challenges and the types of successful outcomes WDS has facilitated.

Scenario 1: Real-Time Financial Risk and Compliance Reporting for a Financial Services Firm

The Challenge: A mid-sized financial services institution was grappling with a fragmented data landscape. Crucial data for risk assessment, regulatory reporting (e.g., MiFID II, Solvency II), and internal financial controls resided in multiple legacy systems, an on-premises data warehouse, and various departmental spreadsheets. Generating consolidated risk reports was a highly manual, time-consuming process, often taking days. This latency meant that risk exposure was not always visible in real-time, and regulatory submissions were prone to inconsistencies and required extensive reconciliation. The board sought greater transparency and agility in risk oversight.
The Fabric & WDS Solution – Igniting Responsive Oversight: WDS partnered with the firm to implement Microsoft Fabric as their unified analytics platform.
Unified Landing Zone: Data from core banking systems, trading platforms, market data feeds, and GL systems was ingested into OneLake via Data Factory, creating a secure and auditable raw data layer.
Streamlined Transformation & Governance: Synapse Data Engineering (Spark) was used to cleanse, conform, and aggregate risk-pertinent data. Complex risk calculations, previously performed in disparate systems, were centralised. Microsoft Purview was integrated to catalogue data assets, track lineage, and apply sensitivity labels, ensuring auditable compliance. WDS provided strategic counsel on data modelling for risk and defining robust governance workflows.
Real-Time Semantic Layer: A comprehensive Power BI semantic model was built using Direct Lake mode, connecting directly to the curated risk data in OneLake. This model incorporated complex risk metrics and regulatory calculations.
Dynamic Board-Pack Reporting: WDS, in close collaboration with the risk and finance teams, designed a suite of interactive Power BI dashboards. These dashboards provided real-time views of key risk indicators (KRIs), capital adequacy, liquidity ratios, and compliance status. Automated alerts were configured using Fabric Activator for threshold breaches.
The Impact – Evolving with Confidence:
- Reduced Reporting Latency: Risk and compliance reports, which previously took 2-3 days to compile, became available in near real-time (updated within minutes of data arrival in Fabric).
- Enhanced Data Consistency & Accuracy: The single version of truth in OneLake eliminated discrepancies, leading to a 30% reduction in time spent on data reconciliation for regulatory reporting.
- Improved Risk Oversight: The board gained immediate visibility into risk exposures, enabling more proactive risk management and faster strategic adjustments.
- Lowered Infrastructure Costs: Consolidation onto Fabric led to an estimated 15% reduction in data infrastructure and maintenance costs compared to the previous fragmented environment.

Scenario 2: Optimising Supply Chain and Inventory Management for a Global Retailer

The Challenge: A global retail company with a complex supply chain faced significant challenges in inventory management. Data from PoS systems, warehouse management systems (WMS), supplier portals, and demand forecasting tools was siloed. This led to stockouts in high-demand areas and overstocking in others, impacting sales and increasing holding costs. The executive team needed a unified view of inventory, demand, and supply to make agile decisions.
The Fabric & WDS Solution – Igniting Agile Operations: WDS guided the retailer in leveraging Microsoft Fabric to create an intelligent supply chain control tower.
Centralised Data Ingestion: Data Factory pipelines were established to ingest data from all relevant sources (PoS, WMS, ERP, supplier feeds, weather data, social media trends) into OneLake.
Advanced Analytics & Demand Forecasting: Synapse Data Engineering and Fabric's potential for AI model integration were used to develop more accurate demand forecasting models, incorporating a wider range of influencing factors. Data was cleansed and structured into a "Gold" layer representing optimised inventory views.
Real-Time Inventory Visibility: Power BI dashboards, using Direct Lake mode, provided real-time visibility into stock levels across all locations, sales velocities, and forecasted demand. KQL in Fabric's Real-Time Analytics was used for live monitoring of PoS transactions to identify emerging trends.
Proactive Alerting & Optimisation: Fabric Activator was configured to trigger alerts for potential stockouts or overstock situations, enabling proactive inventory rebalancing.
The Impact – Stronger Together, Smarter Decisions:
- Reduced Stockouts: Improved forecasting and real-time visibility led to a 10% reduction in stockouts for key product lines.
- Optimised Inventory Holding: Overstocking was reduced by 15%, freeing up working capital and reducing warehousing costs.
- Enhanced Supplier Collaboration (Collaborate): Sharing curated insights from Fabric with key suppliers improved coordination and lead times.
- Increased Sales: Better inventory availability in response to demand contributed to a 5% uplift in sales in pilot regions.

These scenarios illustrate how Wiz Digital Services, by combining deep expertise with the power of Microsoft Fabric, helps organisations transcend traditional data limitations. We empower them to not only report on the past but to actively shape their future with timely, trusted, and actionable intelligence.

The Future of Reporting: Intelligent, Democratised, and Evolving with Fabric

The landscape of data analytics and business reporting is undergoing a transformation, and Microsoft Fabric is at the vanguard of this evolution.

The journey from a static, historical landing-zone to dynamic, board-pack ready intelligence is just the beginning. Fabric is architected not only for today’s needs but also as a platform for continuous innovation, promising a future where reporting becomes more intelligent, democratised, and seamlessly integrated into the fabric of every business decision. Wiz Digital Services is committed to helping clients navigate and harness these future advancements, ensuring their data strategy remains future proof.

The Ascent of AI-Infused Intelligence:

One of the most exciting trajectories for Fabric is its deepening integration with Artificial Intelligence. The introduction of Microsoft 365 Copilot for Fabric is a significant step, empowering users to interact with their data using natural language. Imagine executives asking, "Show me the sales trends for our top three products in the EMEA region for the last quarter, and highlight any anomalies" and receiving an instant, visual response. This capability, as highlighted in the Fabric Compendium's future roadmap discussions, will dramatically lower the barrier to data exploration and insight generation. Beyond Copilots, Fabric's architecture is designed to support:

Integrated Machine Learning Workflows: While currently Fabric’s ML experience leverages Azure ML, deeper integration is anticipated, allowing data scientists to build, train, and deploy models directly within the Fabric environment, using data from OneLake. This will streamline the path from data preparation to predictive insights.
AI-Driven Data Discovery and Quality: AI algorithms will increasingly automate data discovery, classification, and even suggest data quality improvements, making governance more intelligent and less labour-intensive.

WDS is actively exploring these AI frontiers, helping clients understand how to responsibly incorporate these capabilities to not just report what happened, but to predict what will happen and prescribe optimal actions.

Further Democratisation of Data and Analytics:

Fabric's unified nature inherently promotes data democratisation by providing a consistent set of tools and a shared data foundation (OneLake) accessible to various roles. The future will see this trend accelerate:

Self-Service for All: With tools like Dataflows Gen2 for no-code data preparation, natural language querying via Copilots, and user-friendly Power BI interfaces, business users will become increasingly self-sufficient in accessing and analysing data, reducing reliance on central IT or BI teams for ad-hoc requests.
Domain-Oriented Data Ownership: Fabric’s Domains feature supports decentralised data governance, aligning with data mesh principles. This empowers business domains to own and manage their data products within the unified Fabric ecosystem, fostering greater accountability and relevance. WDS can help organisations structure these domains effectively, ensuring a balance between central governance and domain autonomy.

Fabric's Evolving Ecosystem and Openness:

Microsoft is rapidly iterating on Fabric, with a clear commitment to openness and extensibility. Future developments highlighted in roadmaps and community discussions include:

Open Data Ecosystem Support: Features like "Open Mirroring," allowing Fabric to mirror data from external systems like Snowflake or Amazon S3 in real-time, underscore a commitment to interoperability rather than a closed garden. This reduces friction for organisations with heterogeneous data landscapes.
Enhanced Developer Extensibility: Richer SDKs, custom Spark function libraries, and deeper integration with developer tools (like VS Code) will empower engineering teams to build more sophisticated and tailored solutions on Fabric.
Continuous Improvements in Performance and Cost Optimisation: As Fabric matures, we can expect ongoing enhancements to its query engines, storage efficiency, and capacity management features (like automated cost optimisation and more granular chargeback) to deliver even greater value.

Wiz Digital Services stays at the forefront of these developments.

Our ethos means we continuously upskill our teams and refine our methodologies to incorporate the latest Fabric features and best practices. We act as our clients' trusted advisors, helping them understand the implications of Fabric’s roadmap and how to strategically leverage new capabilities as they become available, ensuring their investment continues to yield maximum returns and keeps them ahead of the curve. The future of reporting powered by Fabric is one where insights are not just a backward glance but a forward-looking compass, intelligently guiding every facet of the organisation.

Partner with Wiz Digital Services to Ignite Your Data Future

The era of fragmented data estates, latent insights, and cumbersome reporting processes is rapidly drawing to a close. Microsoft Fabric stands as a testament to a new paradigm: a unified, intelligent, and agile analytics platform designed to empower every organisation to harness the full potential of its data. The journey from establishing a robust data landing-zone to delivering real-time, board-pack ready intelligence is not merely an aspiration but an achievable reality with Fabric, promising unprecedented clarity, speed, and strategic advantage.

This insight report has illuminated the transformative capabilities of Fabric—its cohesive lakehouse architecture centred on OneLake, its suite of integrated experiences, and its groundbreaking features like Direct Lake mode. We have explored how these elements synergise to dismantle traditional data silos, embed governance, and accelerate the entire data lifecycle, making sophisticated analytics accessible and actionable.

However, technology alone is rarely the complete answer. Navigating this transformation, architecting for optimal performance and governance, and translating Fabric's powerful features into tangible business outcomes requires a partner with deep expertise, strategic foresight, and a commitment to collaborative success.

Wiz Digital Services is your catalyst for unlocking the full power of Microsoft Fabric. We bring:

Proven Expertise: Our deep understanding of data engineering, cloud architecture, AI, and business intelligence, coupled with specific Fabric competencies, ensures your implementation is technically sound and strategically aligned.
A Commitment to Your Success: Our values—to Ignite rapid transformation, Safeguard your data assets with integrity, Collaborate as true partners, and continuously Evolve your capabilities—are woven into every engagement.
Accelerated Value Realisation: We de-risk your Fabric adoption, expedite implementation through proven methodologies, and ensure your organisation can quickly leverage insights to drive decisions and achieve your business objectives with zero technical debt.

The future of your organisation will be shaped by your ability to make informed decisions at speed. Microsoft Fabric provides the platform; Wiz Digital Services provides the expertise and partnership to make it happen. Let us help you move beyond the reporting impasse and transform your data into your most valuable strategic asset.