Case Study: Kao Corporation achieves predictive, scalable sales-floor insights with Microsoft Power BI

Creating a cloud-based data analysis platform to gain insight from a vast amount of information

Kao Corporation, a leading Japanese manufacturer of household and beauty products, faced a shift in consumer behavior from buying tangible goods to seeking experiences, and needed to move from retrospective POS analysis to predicting future trends using massive external and social data. To address this, Kao partnered with Microsoft Power BI and migrated its on-premises Kao Collaboration Tools (KCT) to a cloud platform built on Azure and Azure Synapse Analytics to support more scalable, real‑time analysis.

Using Microsoft Power BI together with Azure Synapse Analytics, Kao completed the migration in three months and delivered interactive dashboards with fast drill-downs, enabling dynamic consultations between Kao and chain‑store staff. The cloud solution processes more than 20 billion records, runs at 6,000 cDWU with headroom to scale, significantly improved query performance and usability, reduced expected platform costs by nearly half versus an on‑premises refresh, and cut operational effort while accelerating feature expansion.

Kao Corporation

Takahisa Kotani

KCT Promotion Department at the Distribution Development Division