Microsoft Fabric Guide: Use case end-to-end Deployment

 1. Introduction: Microsoft Fabric and its implementation in banking

The banking and financial services industry is in full bloom.

On one hand, the strengthening of fintech shows that digital, simple and inclusive strategies have prevailed. On the other hand, the emergence of open models such as Open Banking or Banking as a Service motivate traditional companies in the sector to rethink their business.

At the same time, as a result of all of the above, customers are demanding increasingly intuitive, simple and engaging experiences. Standing in an endless line to fill out a form or visit a branch? Activities that have no place in the 21st century.

In this context, digital transformation and artificial intelligence (AI) are consolidating as an inevitable path for banks wishing to embrace the future and seduce new generations of customers.

Banks have a unique possibility. Using data and AI to generate new experiences, detect fraud, manage risks or anticipate the demands of a continuously changing market. But not everything is rosy. For that they need quality data, a corporate data culture and, of course, an architecture that enables continuous innovation and modernization.

In this regard, Microsoft Fabric seeks to bring a solution. By bringing all data and analytics tools together on a single platform, it enables users to extract the maximum value from data. And not only that: it also prepares organizations for the AI era, in which, as mentioned, data is the core piece.

2. What support does Microsoft Fabric provide?

Microsoft Fabric integrates all the data needs of an organization. In principle, even with some preliminary versions and others yet to be released, the goal is for it to cover seven areas:

1. Data Factory. More than 150 connectors to local and cloud data sources. Provides drag-and-drop data transformation and the ability to orchestrate data pipelines.
2. Synapse Data Engineering. Creation experiences for Spark, instant startup with live groups and collaboration.
3. Synapse Data Science. Comprehensive workflow for data scientists to build sophisticated AI models. Simplifies collaboration and enables training, deployment and management of machine learning models.
4. Synapse Data Warehousing. Converged data warehouse and lakehouse with ultra-high-performance SQL in open data formats.
5. Synapse Real-Time Analytics. Enables developers to work with streaming data from Internet of Things (IoT) devices or telemetry and analyze massive volumes of semi-structured data with high performance and low latency.
6. Power BI. AI-powered analytics to turn data into insights.
7. Data Activator. Real-time data detection and monitoring. Triggers notifications and actions when it finds specific patterns in the data. All of its functionalities are obtained in non-code experiences.

In other words, a bank can satisfy its end-to-end data and analytics needs with Microsoft Fabric.

3. The pillars of Microsoft Fabric

There are 5 aspects in which Microsoft Fabric differs from any other solution on the market:

1. Complete analytics platform. No need to go through costly integrations, deal with multiple vendors, or keep the data infrastructure in a fragile environment. A single product, with a single architecture and a unified experience can be leveraged by data experts and business users alike. For banks, which have been accumulating information for decades and often have highly complex data structures, it can be the path to a revolutionary transformation.
2. OneLake-centric open solution. Data is organized in an intuitive data center and automatically indexed. This simplifies discovery, sharing, governance and compliance. At the heart of it all is OneLake, which works with the same simplicity for data as OneDrive does for documents. Duplications, errors and uncertainties are avoided. And any Fabric workload connects directly to OneLake. Many banks have long struggled with data silos, siloed storage or chaotic architectures. So they find here a key tool to get them on the road to limitless growth. In addition, Fabric is committed to open data formats across all workloads and all tiers. This includes both structured and unstructured data.
3. AI is at the heart of it all. Thanks to Copilot, users have conversational language queries to create data streams and pipelines, create code or machine learning models, and visualize results. In the highly competitive financial market, the ability to access insights quickly and easily can be the key to market leadership.
4. Empowering business users. The ease of use is such that it helps to generate a data culture that crosses the entire organization. For financial services companies, in particular, this is an essential element going forward.
5. Unified capabilities. An end-to-end approach that allows workloads to be leveraged freely and without friction. From the financial institution’s point of view, this translates into better IT budget management and lower costs.

4. What are the advantages of implementing Microsoft Fabric?

The advantages of implementing Microsoft Fabric cover the world of financial services, business, technological, process and people issues.

Some of the most important are:

• Unlock the potential of data. This is the core of this solution: that every employee in the company has the right data at the right time to drive organizational growth.
• Easy adoption. As it provides a software-as-a-service (SaaS) experience, integration and optimization are automatic. Users need only a few minutes to sign up. And thanks to the generative AI Copilot and the intuitiveness of the tool, they can get business value in minutes.
• Each team gets exactly what they need based on their role. 
• From data engineers and data scientists to business users.
• Higher levels of management and governance. Because it’s a unified experience. IT teams centrally set up core business capabilities and permissions are automatically applied across services. This, in turn, helps to drastically reduce costs.
• Accelerated decision making. Enterprises can accelerate their journey to the data-driven model, driving timely, accurate and real-time decisions, in all cases based on data.

5. The keys to align Microsoft Fabric with business needs

The implementation and adoption of Microsoft Fabric are just the tip of the iceberg of the benefits that a bank can obtain with this tool. The key is to achieve an effective alignment with business needs. 

For that, it is essential:

– To generate a data culture: the set of behaviors and rules in the organization that lead to a data-driven model. In this framework, decisions are made based on data, and not on intuition, experience or opinions.

– To understand the strategic importance of data and its analysis to achieve any business purpose.

– To refine and increase the quality of existing data.

– To promote the democratization of data. This allows more and more users to access data to solve day-to-day business problems.

– To develop a governance culture that allows a balance between empowering users and minimizing risks.

– To obtain the commitment of senior management, essential for the success of the project.

– To deploy consistent and systematic processes to develop, test, deploy and continuously improve solutions.

– To have a Center of Excellence (CoE) in place to establish best practices, prioritization of initiatives and vision for the future.

– Having a technology partner experienced in data, AI and banking. This is a key enabler to underpin initiatives, help explore opportunities, enable navigating pitfalls and anticipate trends. It also significantly increases the chances of project success.

6. Conclusions

Banking and financial services companies that want to lead in the future business picture must focus on data and AI. 

Microsoft Fabric is positioned as an ideal tool, as it concentrates all the data and analytics needs of companies in the industry into a single unified platform. It enables tools for advanced data users and business users.

The support of a technology partner is key to getting the most out of the solution.

In conclusion, thanks to this solution, banks have access to a simple, effective, cost-efficient and future-proof solution that is the cornerstone on the road to the data-driven model.

Find out how Microsoft Fabric can empower the digital transformation of your business. Our experts are ready to answer your questions and customize a solution that fits your organization’s needs. Schedule your meeting!