Case Study: Centrica achieves faster, real-time reporting and richer data insights with Microsoft Azure

Centrica energy trading business innovates faster in the cloud

Centrica, a leading UK integrated energy company, needed a more responsive and efficient data platform for its finance, trading, and reporting teams. Its data was fragmented across billing, pricing, ERP, CRM, and trading systems, and reporting often depended on spreadsheets, making it difficult to handle growing volumes and deliver real-time insights. Microsoft Azure and Microsoft Fabric were used to address these challenges.

Microsoft Azure and Microsoft Fabric brought Centrica’s disparate datasets into a unified platform using Azure Data Factory, Azure HDInsight, and Lakehouse storage, with Power BI enabling self-service reporting. The result was a streamlined reporting process, real-time querying, and the ability to work with billions of rows of data in seconds; in one example, 45 report spreadsheets were consolidated into a single real-time report. This has improved efficiency, data integrity, and self-serve analytics, while also enabling new analysis opportunities such as smart meter insights from 10 billion records.

Centrica

Rahul Malik

Head of IT