Your board asked for Q3 forecasts yesterday. Your finance director is still pulling numbers from five different systems, each telling a slightly different story about revenue. By the time the forecast lands in your inbox tomorrow afternoon, it'll be based on data that's already three days old.
Meanwhile, your credit controller just discovered a supplier payment dispute from two months ago that nobody flagged because the contract terms live in one system, the purchase orders live in another, and the payment history lives in a third. Your management accountant spent this morning manually adjusting departmental budgets because the system can't allocate shared costs automatically.
Microsoft Fabric addresses this. It's Microsoft's unified analytics platform that brings your financial data together in one place (a data lake - think of it as one storage location for everything, structured or unstructured), delivers current information when you need it, and removes the manual work that consumes your team's time.
Not another dashboard. Not another reporting tool. A complete platform that changes how finance teams access and use data.
What Drives Microsoft Fabric Adoption?
Three things push CFOs toward Fabric, and none of them are about technology for technology's sake.
First: The manual consolidation tax. Your team wastes hours every quarter pulling data from multiple sources, adjusting for inconsistencies, and hoping the numbers reconcile. Fabric addresses this by creating a unified data foundation. Everyone works from the same data, automatically synced.
Second: Decision latency. You need to respond to supplier issues, customer payment patterns, or operational changes. But your information is always historical. By the time you see the trend, you're already reacting late. Fabric delivers current financial data from Business Central, Dynamics 365, or Sage directly into Power BI dashboards. You see what's happening now, not what happened last period.
Third: The AI readiness gap. Everyone's talking about AI for finance. But AI needs clean, accessible, unified data. Your data is scattered across structured databases (20% of what you've got) and unstructured sources like emails, documents, and spreadsheets (the other 80%). Fabric handles all of it. That makes you AI-ready when the finance applications you'll actually use become available.
Common Microsoft Fabric Myths That Delay Finance Teams
"This is just Power BI with a new name"
No. Power BI handles visualisation and reporting brilliantly. Microsoft Fabric handles the entire data lifecycle - ingestion, storage, transformation, governance, and analytics. Power BI is one component of Fabric, not a replacement for it. Think of Power BI as the dashboard. Fabric is the engine, storage, and data pipeline combined.
"We'll need to rebuild everything"
Also no. Fabric integrates with your existing Microsoft stack. Business Central, Dynamics 365, Azure - they all connect. Your current Power BI reports? They still work. You're adding capability, not replacing your entire infrastructure.
"The licensing will cost too much"
Microsoft Fabric licensing operates on a consumption model, not per-user seats. You pay for what you use, scaling with data volume and complexity. For most mid-market finance teams, the cost comparison matters more than the absolute number - compare licensing investment to your current reconciliation tax and decision lag costs.
"This is only for massive enterprises with data science teams"
Finance teams use Fabric without data scientists. The platform includes visual tools, pre-built connectors, and guided workflows. Yes, you can do advanced data engineering if you want. But you can also just connect Business Central to OneLake, transform data using visual pipelines, and build dashboards in Power BI. No Python required.
Microsoft Fabric vs Power BI: What's the Actual Difference?
Power BI creates reports and dashboards from data that's already prepared. Brilliant at what it does. But it doesn't handle data storage, doesn't manage data pipelines, and doesn't give you a unified data lake.
Microsoft Fabric gives you the complete stack:
OneLake: Your organisation's single data repository. Structured data from Business Central, unstructured data from SharePoint, everything in one place. This is your source of truth.
Data Factory: Automated pipelines that move data from source systems into OneLake without manual intervention. Set it up once, it runs continuously.
Data Engineering: Tools for transforming raw data into usable formats. Clean it, structure it, prepare it for analysis.
Data Warehouse: Optimised storage for analytical queries. Fast, scalable, integrated.
Power BI: The visualisation and reporting layer you already know, now working with unified, governed data instead of fragmented sources.
Think of it this way: Power BI is the dashboard in your car. Fabric is the entire vehicle - engine, transmission, fuel system, and dashboard combined. You need both. Fabric provides capabilities that Power BI alone can't deliver.
Microsoft Fabric Data Types: What It Handles
Fabric works with everything your business creates:
Structured data: Your ERP transactions, CRM records, and databases. The traditional information that sits in neat tables. This represents roughly 20% of your business data.
Semi-structured data: Information with some organisation but not rigid structure. Think system exports and data feeds between applications.
Unstructured data: Emails, documents, PDFs, images, videos. The other 80% of business data that traditional systems ignore completely.
This matters because financial decisions don't just come from your ERP system. They come from supplier emails, contract documents, budget spreadsheets, board reports, and customer communications. Fabric brings all of it together. You get complete context, not just the numbers in your accounting system.
Microsoft Fabric data sharing extends this further - you can securely share datasets across teams and external partners without duplicating data or losing control.
How Microsoft Fabric Works for Finance Teams
Here's the practical flow:
Step 1: Connect Your Financial Systems
Fabric links directly to your ERP system. Data flows automatically using Fabric's built-in connections. No manual exports. No CSV files. No hoping someone remembered to run the refresh script.
For Business Central specifically, Microsoft's connector enables continuous mirroring. Your transactions appear in OneLake within minutes of being recorded.
Step 2: Store Everything in OneLake
Everything arrives in OneLake - your unified data repository. Structured financial transactions sit alongside budget spreadsheets, supplier contracts, and forecasting models. All governed. All secure. All in one place.
Step 3: Transform and Build Models
Use point-and-click tools to clean and structure your data. Remove duplicates, standardise formats, calculate derived metrics. Finance users handle this with the no-code interface. Create the business logic that defines your KPIs, hierarchies, and relationships - where "revenue" means the same thing to everyone and cost centres map correctly.
Step 4: Deliver Insights Through Power BI
Your dashboards and reports now draw from unified, governed, current data. Management sees the same numbers as operations. Finance sees the same numbers as the board. Manual reconciliation becomes obsolete because everyone works from consistent information.
Step 5: Automate and Govern
The entire process runs automatically. Data flows, transforms, and updates without manual intervention. Built-in governance controls who sees what, tracks every change, and operates security at enterprise scale.
Getting Started: What CFOs Need to Do
Start with one specific problem. Don't try to transform your entire data landscape overnight. Pick something measurable:
- Automate budget vs actual reporting
- Eliminate manual cash flow reconciliation
- Connect sales pipeline data to financial forecasts
- Create current cost centre dashboards
Partner with IT early. Finance teams know what metrics matter. IT teams know how systems connect. Both perspectives are essential. Work together to identify the 5-10 financial KPIs that drive decisions. Translate those into technical requirements.
Leverage your existing Microsoft investment. You've already got your ERP system, Power BI licences, and Excel. Fabric integrates with all of it. The learning curve is much gentler than switching to an entirely new platform.
Run a focused pilot. 6-8 weeks. One department or one process. Demonstrate value quickly, build confidence, then expand. Most implementations show measurable time savings within the first month of the pilot.
Work with a Microsoft partner who understands finance. The technology is powerful but complex. Finance teams rarely have the expertise to handle the technical setup alone - nor should they. Partners who've implemented Fabric for finance teams before understand where the challenges are, what approaches work, and how to avoid expensive mistakes. This isn't optional for most businesses. It's the difference between a system that works and one that becomes another problem to manage.
What This Means for Your Finance Team
Microsoft Fabric licensing and implementation represent an investment. But so does maintaining your current situation. Compare Fabric's cost to what you're already paying:
- Finance team time wasted on reconciliation
- Decision lag costs (missed opportunities, late responses)
- Manual error correction and rework
A partner who knows both Fabric and finance will help build your business case, identify where it addresses your specific pain points, and handle the technical implementation. Finance teams typically see measurable time savings within the first month.
Done properly, Fabric transforms how finance teams work. Done poorly, it becomes another tool that doesn't quite deliver.
Ready to see how this works for your situation? Get in touch with our team.
Frequently Asked Questions About Microsoft Fabric
What are Microsoft Fabric data types?
Microsoft Fabric handles structured data (databases, ERP transactions), semi-structured data (system exports and data feeds), and unstructured data (documents, emails, images). This covers roughly 100% of business data, not just the 20% that traditional data warehouses manage. The platform uses OneLake as a unified storage layer that works with all these formats simultaneously.
What is Microsoft Fabric Lakehouse?
Microsoft Fabric Lakehouse combines data lake storage (handles all data types) with data warehouse capabilities (optimised for analytics). It's part of Fabric's unified platform. The Lakehouse stores your raw and processed data in OneLake while providing query engines for analysis. This eliminates the traditional choice between lakes (flexible but slow) and warehouses (fast but rigid).
Microsoft Fabric vs Power BI: which should finance teams choose?
You need both. Power BI handles visualisation and reporting. Microsoft Fabric handles data ingestion, storage, transformation, and governance - then feeds clean, unified data into Power BI for reporting. Power BI works with Fabric but can't replace it. If you only use Power BI, you're still managing data pipelines, storage, and governance separately. Fabric unifies these into one platform.
How does Microsoft Fabric licensing work?
Fabric uses capacity-based licensing, not per-user seats. You purchase Fabric capacity units (compute and storage resources) and pay for what you consume. Costs scale with data volume and complexity. Unlike traditional per-seat licensing, you're not paying for inactive users.
What is Microsoft Fabric data sharing?
Microsoft Fabric data sharing lets you securely share datasets with other teams or external partners without duplicating data. Access controls operate at granular levels - you can share specific tables, columns, or rows while maintaining governance. Partners can query shared data directly in OneLake without moving copies between systems.
Can Microsoft Fabric connect to our existing ERP system?
Yes. Fabric includes pre-built connections for Business Central, Dynamics 365, NAV, Sage, and other major ERP systems. For Business Central specifically, continuous mirroring is available. For other systems, scheduled refresh intervals typically run 5-15 minutes. Custom connections handle proprietary or legacy systems.
