Empowering Enterprise Marketing Analytics with Microsoft Fabric

A major North American restaurant chain struggled with reporting inefficiencies and data silos due to a fragmented analytics environment built on Snowflake, MicroStrategy, and Excel. They were heavily relied on manual processes and a single analyst further hindered timely insights. To streamline operations and empower teams with self-service analytics, the organization partnered with iLink Digital to transform its data strategy using Microsoft Fabric.

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Industry

Restaurant

Company size

10K+ Employees

Headquarters

Texas, U.S.A.

Client Overview

A globally recognized quick-service restaurant brand, is recognized for its innovative menu offerings and strong focus on customer experience. They’re deeply committed to delivering convenient, consistent, and high-quality dining experiences through a blend of innovative technology, customer-centric services, and operational excellence.

Challenges

Long Lead Times: Report generation took up to an hour, delaying critical business decisions.
Fragmented Reporting: Multiple reports existed for similar functions, creating inconsistencies.
Over-Reliance on Analysts: A single analyst served as the bottleneck for all reporting needs.
Siloed Insights: Lack of unified data structures led to inconsistent metrics and inefficient workflows.
Unmanaged Architecture: The reporting environment lacked a structured, governed model for scale.

Solution

To address these issues, iLink Digital introduced Microsoft Fabric to unify and modernize the client’s reporting architecture. The solution focused on four key pillars:

Direct Lake Mode in Power BI: Implemented to significantly improve performance and reduce latency in report loading.
ELT in OneLake Using Fabric Notebooks: Leveraged Spark compute for scalable data transformations and reduced processing overhead.
Endorsed Semantic Data Model: Designed a certified and reusable semantic layer to ensure consistency in reporting and analysis.
Self-Service Analytics at Scale: Enabled business users to perform ad-hoc and repeatable campaign analysis through familiar tools like Power BI and Excel.

Tech Stack

Business Outcome

Drastically Reduced Cycle Time

Reporting time dropped from one hour to just five seconds.

Real-Time Campaign Insights

Marketing teams gained instant access to campaign metrics with pre-built models and reports.

Consistent and Modern Experience

A unified analytics experience through Power BI and Excel connected to a certified semantic layer.

New Analytical Capabilities

Teams are now empowered to perform ad-hoc analysis across multiple marketing campaigns with repeatable accuracy.

Conclusion

Through a strategic implementation of Microsoft Fabric, iLink Digital helped the client eliminate reporting bottlenecks, empower marketing teams with real-time insights, and establish a modern, scalable analytics ecosystem. This transformation not only improved operational efficiency but also fostered a data-driven culture where business users can independently access and analyze information for faster and more strategic decision-making.

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