What a brilliant morning we had at The Dean Hotel, Dublin for our 'Building Business Value with Microsoft Fabric' strategy briefing on May 20th!
There was great energy in the room and conversations centred around a reality that almost every modern organisation faces: most businesses are sitting on massive volumes of data, but they struggle to translate it into faster decisions or real business results.
BCG recently reported a staggering 74% of companies struggle to generate tangible business value from their AI and data investments. They traced this back to tech-led initiatives. Leading with technology means business outcomes aren't tracked, and organisations allow investment in advanced AI to be stacked on uncertain , ungoverned data foundations.
Our briefing focused on closing that gap. To unlock real ROI and achieve AI readiness, organisations must ensure their data is Accurate, Connected, and Trusted by the business.
Here is a recap of the key sessions and the four major themes defining where data-driven businesses are heading:
1. Building a Data Strategy Anchored in Business Value
Kevin Lynch (Head of Technology, The Information Lab Ireland) challenged the traditional "tech-led" mindset. Too often, businesses declare "We need a lakehouse" before understanding the business question they are trying to answer.
Kevin mapped out The Value-Led Advantage, showing how the successful 26% of companies anchor every data initiative to a specific, quantifiable business decision before building anything. By balancing the "Dual Mandate" - delivering value fast through quick wins while building a sustainable architecture for the future - organisations can build internal momentum and true platform trust.
2. Accelerating with AI & Agents
Harry Cooney and Theo Isaac (Senior Managers) took us on a deep dive into the rapid evolution of AI, moving it out of the exclusive domain of data scientists and bringing it directly to business users. They demonstrated three core capabilities within the Microsoft ecosystem:
Fabric AI Functions: "One-liners" embedded directly into pipelines that automatically handle translation, categorisation, and sentiment analysis on raw data.
Fabric Data Agents & Fabric IQ: How an Ontology layer teaches AI your specific business logic, allowing users to safely query data using natural language instead of writing SQL.
Azure AI Foundry: Utilising Knowledge Mining and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) to safely unlock institutional memory buried inside static PDFs and contracts without the risk of hallucinations.
3. The Medallion Architecture: Driving Progressive Data Quality
Sarah Barter (Data Consultant) tackled the age-old board meeting dilemma: three different departments presenting three different Total Revenue figures. To solve this data chaos, Sarah advocated for the Medallion Architecture, a multi-layered data management pattern for lakehouses in Microsoft Fabric:
Bronze (Raw): Ingesting data "as-is" from over 140+ source connectors.
Silver (Validated): Cleaning, removing duplicates, and conforming data into a clean enterprise source of truth.
Gold (Enriched): Shaping and aggregating datasets so they are business-ready, tailored to KPIs, and optimised for Power BI or AI consumption.
This progressive approach ensures that nothing is lost, data quality problems are visible and manageable, and costs stay low via incremental processing.
Feature Case Study: Re-Turn’s Fabric Migration Journey
The absolute standout of the morning was hearing the honest, practical story of how Re-Turn (the operator behind Ireland's national Deposit Return Scheme) re-engineered for AI by partnering with The Information Lab to deploy Microsoft Fabric.
Enrique Gallego (Data Engineering Lead at Re-Turn) and Harry Cooney detailed the "co-build" model utilised to move away from legacy systems and establish a trusted data foundation to support Re-Turn's ambitious star objective: achieving a 90% container return rate by 2029.
By engaging 19 stakeholders across 13 business workshops, the joint team mapped out operational friction and moved through a phased maturity model ("Crawl, Walk, Run")
The Result? Re-Turn built internal engineering capability instead of relying on an outsourced "black box". Their daily data refreshes are now ~60% faster, and key semantic models are ~93% faster.
AI-Powered Leadership: Because they co-designed a robust, governed Gold Layer, it now acts as the trusted "brain" for "Agent Smith"- their custom Fabric Data Agent. Today, rather than waiting on ad-hoc IT reports, even their CEO queries live dashboards and complex operational metrics directly using natural language.
Four Themes Shaping the Future of Business
Everything covered during the morning successfully tied back into the pillars of The Information Lab's ACT Framework (Accurate, Connected, Trusted):
A Clear Strategic Focus on Data and AI: Breaking down data silos to automate processes and make AI core to business operations.
Unlocking Operational Efficiency with Agents: Deploying AI agents to handle time-consuming tasks—which only work when built on accurate data.
Governing AI for Maximum Impact: Embedding governance at the core of your structure to prevent conflicting numbers and ensure one single version of the truth.
Building Skills for an AI-Ready Organisation: Leveraging managed services to gain specialised capabilities without the friction of building a team entirely from scratch.
Let’s Build Your Roadmap (Funding is Available!)
The journey to an AI-ready data estate doesn't have to strain your internal budget. Through our partner network, various funding avenues exist to offset Fabric build costs, including Microsoft Funding (via Azure Accelerate for Assessment, Roadmap development and delivery) and Enterprise Ireland Funding (such as the Digital Discovery or DPI grants).
Talk to us today if you are interested to learn about Microsoft and Enterprise Ireland funding options for your business.
A massive thank you to everyone who joined us, to our exceptional speakers, and a special thanks to Enrique and the Re-Turn team for sharing their journey so openly.
Ready to close the gap between your data and real business value? Contact our team today to discuss a rapid data & AI assessment tailored to your business challenges.