Case Study: Mall of America improves guest experience and boosts escalator uptime with Microsoft Power BI

Mall of America enhances guest experiences with improved data through IoT cloud technology

Mall of America, a 5.6 million-square-foot entertainment and retail destination that welcomes about 40 million visitors a year, needed better ways to monitor building systems—especially 46 escalators—because its legacy Building Management System had no integrated usage or downtime data. To support a digital transformation focused on guest experience and maintenance efficiency, the mall adopted Microsoft technologies, including Azure IoT solution accelerators, Microsoft PowerApps, and Microsoft Power BI.

Using Azure IoT to feed escalator sensors into the BMS API, Mall of America tied real‑time status into its guest mobile app and digital maps and gave engineers mobile access via PowerApps; it also connected the data to Microsoft Power BI for dashboards and analytics. The initiative improved escalator uptime from roughly 90% to 95–97% within six months, created three full‑time analytics roles, and produced actionable insights (visitor search patterns, population movement, HVAC use, and predictive energy strategies) that boosted responsiveness and informed cost-saving decisions.

Mall of America

Janette Smrcka

Information Technology Director