Case Study: Kennametal achieves 20% faster product development with Microsoft Power BI

Engineering the next innovation in material science with Microsoft Power BI

Kennametal, a 12,000-employee materials science and manufacturing company, faced difficulty tapping and securely analyzing decades of dispersed intellectual property and engineering data. Although the company had moved data into an SAP ERP, employees relied on spreadsheets, notebooks, and disparate analytics tools like Tableau, creating security risks and slow, hard-to-use reporting—so Kennametal sought a centralized, user-friendly business intelligence solution from Microsoft Power BI.

Kennametal implemented Microsoft Power BI (with integrations across Cortana, Office 365 and Dynamics CRM) to give employees cloud-based, natural-language query and visual, mobile-enabled analytics. The solution lets 12,000 users explore data and find comparable materials or customer metrics in minutes, improving workflows, reducing development cost, and enabling faster product introductions—Kennametal cites up to a 20% faster time to market—and better leverage of previously siloed IP thanks to Microsoft Power BI.

Kennametal

Steven Hanna

Vice President and Chief Information Officer