Case Study: Penguin Random House achieves unified, near‑real‑time insights into global sales with Microsoft Power BI

Penguin Random House enhances its outreach to book readers using Azure services and Power BI

Penguin Random House, one of the world’s largest book publishers, needed a unified view of complex global product and sales data—1.2 million titles sold through 200 imprints—with ISBN variations and disparate legacy systems making it hard to track trends and reader preferences. To modernize analytics and surface trending titles faster, Penguin Random House deployed Microsoft Azure Analysis Services, Azure Cognitive Search, and Microsoft Power BI.

Using Microsoft Power BI connected to Azure services, Penguin Random House built dashboards that analyze almost 3 billion rows of data (55 GB of tabular storage), enable near–real-time interactive reporting for ~1,000 users, and eliminated days of manual data wrangling each month. The Microsoft Power BI solution, developed with Microsoft CSAs and partner Orion Innovation, sped project delivery from months to weeks, freed analysts to focus on insights instead of data assembly, and improved global access and collaboration.

Penguin Random House

Edward Dulinski

VP, Technology