Case Study: Avanade achieves improved employee retention with Microsoft Power BI

Microsoft platform–focused IT consulting company innovates with Power BI and Azure to improve employee retention

Avanade, a global Microsoft‑platform IT consulting firm, faced the challenge of improving employee retention to protect talent, reduce recruiting/onboarding costs, and preserve client service continuity. To make retention efforts more proactive and data‑driven, Avanade partnered with Microsoft Power BI (alongside Azure services and Azure Machine Learning) to surface forward‑looking attrition risk rather than relying solely on retrospective surveys and exit interviews.

Avanade’s ITS and HR teams implemented an Azure‑based pipeline (Azure Data Factory, Data Lake Storage, Azure Machine Learning with LightGBM, Azure DevOps CI/CD and Azure Cosmos DB) that runs monthly to predict individual attrition risk and pushes results into Microsoft Power BI dashboards. Power BI reports—featuring SHAP‑based explanations, role‑level security, and natural‑language Q&A—give HR and leaders actionable insights; Avanade expects that a 10% reduction in attrition could save the company millions annually and has begun rolling these predictive insights out via its HR Global Engagement Program.

Avanade

Cem Urfalioglu

ITS Intelligent Enterprise Portfolio Lead