Running since 2007 and now with over 3,000 attendees, SQL Bits has become the largest Data Platform conference in the world, running annually and featuring 200 world class speakers, 300+ hours of content, and the best networking opportunities in the industry. It features the world’s best experts in the Microsoft data space presenting and attending from across the world.
I presented a session on what Microsoft Fabric means for a Finance/BI Analyst.
We started with looking at how financial reporting has evolved over time towards being more self-service driven with Power BI, and some of the challenges this presents when not supported by a cloud data platform. (Transactional finance data in particular needs a lot of work to be used for analytical purposes and this needs to be done in an auditable, scalable and performant manner!).
With the need for a data platform established, we looked at how Microsoft Fabric brings much of this capability back into the hands of technically minded finance staff who are now able to self-serve on the entire analytics process. We will explore the concepts of lakehouses and OneLake being the single location for all finance data (rather than much of it being kept in local Excel files!) and considered the benefits of all analytical workloads being able to utilise this data without having to duplicate it.
Finally we looked at how Fabric needs to be implemented across the Finance and IT functions in order to reap its benefits. This includes getting the right operating model (based on data mesh or CoE models) and considering the needs and skillsets of different individuals who work with data (e.g Data Explorers, Data Analysts, Data Engineers and Analytics Engineers!).