Case Study: Willis Towers Watson achieves centralized reporting and scalable analytics with Microsoft Power BI

Willis Towers Watson achieves seamless scalability in the cloud

Willis Towers Watson, a global insurance consulting and technology firm, faced costly, inflexible on‑premises infrastructure—more than 80 SQL Server instances and compute provisioned for peak workloads that were used only 20–30% of the time—just as client demand grew for affordable, managed reserving and pricing services. To modernize delivery and add centralized reporting and analytics, the company moved to Microsoft Azure (including Azure SQL Database, SQL Data Warehouse, Azure Databricks and Azure Data Lake Store) and adopted tools such as Microsoft Power BI for reporting.

Using Azure Database Migration Service, Willis Towers Watson migrated 80+ SQL instances with no user downtime and moved its actuarial vPlace platform into the cloud, enabling elastic scaling, on‑demand pricing and faster project turnaround. The Microsoft Power BI‑enabled solution cut over‑provisioning, delivered measurable cost savings by charging only for consumed SQL resources, and opened new markets—allowing the firm to serve small and medium customers in Latin America and Asia Pacific while rolling out AI/ML and advanced analytics.

Willis Towers Watson

Greg Matuskovic

Director – Global Solutions Architecture, Insurance Consulting and Technology