Dentsu reimagined its global analytics platform by moving its enterprise data estate to Microsoft Fabric on Azure. The goal was to reduce latency in data movement and make reporting closer to real time.

Key steps they took:

• Migrated to Microsoft Fabric and consolidated data warehousing, lake storage, and Power BI into a single, enterprise-grade platform.
• Used the Fabric Migration Assistant to streamline dataset transitions from existing environments.
• Adopted FastTrack for Dynamics 365, which cut data replication time for critical metrics from over 45 minutes to under 20 minutes.
• Implemented Apache Spark pipelines in Fabric to process and normalize large volumes of data at scale.

The impact has been tangible:

• Data replication speeds improved by 55%, enabling near real-time updates for campaign-level metrics.
• Query performance accelerated, giving analysts faster access to trusted data.
• Teams spend less time on data prep and more time on analysis and decision-making.

As Dentsu describes it, they are no longer just building dashboards; they are building a real-time, enterprise-wide decision engine that supports timely, data-informed decisions across the organization.

Dentsu needed to unify its data while still giving regional teams the flexibility to address local market needs. To do this, they adopted a hybrid, domain-based architecture on Microsoft Fabric.

Their approach combined strong governance with local autonomy:

• Implemented a semantic layer in Fabric with centralized gold-layer datasets and standardized KPIs.
• Allowed regional teams to customize insights on top of these shared, governed datasets to meet local reporting requirements.
• Used Power BI templates to maintain consistency in reporting across markets while still enabling tailored dashboards.
• Built domain-based and medallion architectures on Azure to improve data sharing and concurrency across global teams.
• Orchestrated data ingestion and flows within Fabric’s data engineering environment to keep data reliable and governed.

To reinforce governance, Dentsu is also bringing in Microsoft Purview for more secure data access and policy management. This setup helps them:

• Break down regional data silos without losing control.
• Provide a consistent, trusted view of performance—such as a 360-degree view of agency network performance for management.
• Scale analytics globally while respecting local needs and regulations.

The result is a unified analytics fabric that supports both enterprise-wide standards and regional innovation.

Dentsu is using its unified Fabric platform as the foundation for AI-ready analytics, with a particular focus on generative AI and Copilot in Fabric.

Preparation work includes:

• Cleaning and structuring decades of historical data to ensure quality and consistency.
• Building robust semantic models with well-defined KPIs and enriched metadata.
• Standardizing core analytics models (for example, maintained in English) while enabling multilingual access.

In practice, this enables new ways of working:

• A leader in Tokyo can ask a question in Japanese, Copilot translates and queries the English model, and returns a fully visualized answer in seconds.
• Leaders across offices—from Tokyo to Toronto—can ask strategic questions in their native languages and get clear, visual insights without needing deep technical skills.

Looking ahead, Dentsu plans to expand into:

• Predictive analytics to anticipate outcomes of decisions.
• Prescriptive analytics to evaluate and recommend actions before they are taken.

This AI-ready foundation, built on Microsoft Fabric, is reshaping how the organization makes decisions—moving from static reports to an interactive, conversational, and insight-driven way of managing performance and risk.