Chalhoub Group’s People Analytics team speeds reporting with Microsoft Fabric

Agility is a key advantage for companies in every industry, but it can be a business-defining edge for retail. As competitors in a sometimes-cutthroat marketplace, retailers rely on their ability to realize speedy adjustments to rapidly changing fashions, customer demands, and market conditions.

For over six decades, Chalhoub Group has been a partner and creator of luxury experiences in the Middle East. The Group, in its endeavor to excel as a hybrid retailer, has reinforced its distribution and marketing services with a portfolio of 10 owned brands and over 450 international brands in the luxury, beauty, fashion, and art de vivre categories. More recently, the Group expanded its expertise into new categories: luxury watches, jewelry, and eyewear. Every step at Chalhoub Group is taken with the customer at heart. Whether it be constantly reinventing itself, focusing on innovation to provide luxury experiences at over 750 experiential retail stores, or providing online access through mobile apps, Chalhoub Group’s aim is to delight each customer.

Chalhoub Group employs over 16,000 skilled and talented team members across eight countries, with a human resources organization that faced significant challenges from siloed applications and a slow-moving formal approval process. Mark Hourany, Director, People Analytics at Chalhoub Group, notes, "Our HR organization faced challenges in accessing critical data analytics. The process was bogged down by formal approvals and delays, which hampered our operational agility." The finance and HR data systems were isolated, hindering effective decision-making.

"Especially at budget and planning intervals,” says Eia Bergman, Director, People for Level Shoes, a brand owned by Chalhoub Group. “We had only about days to put together our projections, and we needed it. Running reports took many hours, and we still had to rely on intuition and informed guessing to make decisions about staffing, salaries, and commissions.”

“We started with wanting to enable our users to have easier-to-access analytics rather than having to put data together from different sources and dig for insights,” explains Tony Atallah, VP, Rewards, Tech HR & People Analytics at Chalhoub Group. “Connecting the dots could give our central leadership team a realistic, real-time view of our workforce.”

A modern, end-to-end data analytics solution

As Chalhoub Group sought to modernize and streamline its people analytics operations, Microsoft Fabric emerged as the optimal solution. "We were already using Microsoft Power BI, but we needed something more robust that would allow our analytics team to have control, visibility, and governance over data pipelines feeding into Power BI," notes Hourany. Fabric, a trailblazing data analytics platform, offered a comprehensive solution that addressed the Group’s HR needs perfectly. Fabric includes streamlined data management, enhanced scalability and efficiency, and the ability to perform intricate data analytics.

Atallah adds, "The integration of Microsoft Fabric allowed us to bring all our data sources into one platform, enhancing our analytical capabilities and significantly speeding up our processes."

Chalhoub Group tested the platform thoroughly in a proof-of-concept trial. "We started implementing Fabric as soon as it was available in preview," Hourany recounts. "The early stages were experimental, which helped us understand and maximize the platform’s capabilities without immediate pressure."

“We took full advantage of the six-month trial during the Fabric preview,” explains Hourany. “We had anticipated that some issues would arise while Microsoft was still upgrading the platform. With the evolution of Fabric and incredible support from the Microsoft technical support teams—including help from a Fabric specialist who visited us during his vacation in Dubai—all those challenges disappeared, and we were set up for success.”

Chalhoub Group leaned in to the unified vision for Fabric and took advantage of workloads like Spark, OneLake, Power BI, Data Factory, and more to build out its solution. Fabric enabled the people analytics team at Chalhoub Group to automate and streamline data ingestion from various enterprise resource planning (ERP) and software-as-a-service platforms. Data from various sources is transformed via Spark and ingested via Data Factory, where it all lands in one overarching lakehouse. Chalhoub Group uses OneLake mainly for use cases involving end-user manual inputs, and occasionally for user consumption or external data sharing. With Direct Lake, data from OneLake can quickly be accessed in Power BI, making it even easier to visualize high-quality data. Data Factory supports data pipelining.

The worth of Microsoft Fabric

Microsoft Fabric is a cornerstone in Chalhoub Group’s technological advancement. "It’s about what the technology enables us to achieve—a smarter, faster, and more connected operational environment," Hourany states. The Group has been able to ingest data from new sources, reaching more end users and increasing satisfaction with more use cases.

Fabric is helping Chalhoub Group HR achieve better governance and greater trust in its data. “With the previous setup in place, we weren’t notified or aware when refreshes were failing,” notes Hourany. “It appeared that Power BI was refreshing, but it would, in fact, be recycling old data sets. With Fabric Data Pipelines, we embedded Microsoft Outlook notifications at every step of the pipeline, giving us all the visibility required to quickly address technical issues and prevent semantic model refreshes with outdated information.”

The company is now able, thanks to Spark, to address use cases that were previously unavailable. Chalhoub Group can add history to information or create new calculated features (such as time with manager) without having to use support from the human resources information system or the ERP support team to build a new, costly ERP feature.

Copilot in Power BI was an unexpected benefit. As Hourany says, “We knew Copilot for BI was included when we purchased our capacity, but we certainly didn’t expect it to be so easy to set up, so accurate, and so helpful for our team and our end users. For us, Copilot helped with code improvement suggestions. We’ve just introduced it to immense enthusiasm from our end users in our latest People & Culture townhall.”

The adoption of Fabric transformed the daily operations for Chalhoub Group’s team members as data is converted into insights faster during critical and time-sensitive activities. "Our team can now build their reports and access data in near-real time and refresh information frequently and accurately,” highlights Bergman. “This autonomy has significantly enhanced productivity and eliminated high-pressure, around-the-clock efforts during budget seasons." Refreshing data reports once required 5 to 6 hours to run. They are now ready in just 30 minutes.

Looking ahead, Chalhoub Group’s HR function plans to further integrate Fabric into other areas of their operations. The scalability and inclusiveness of Fabric promise to support the company’s agility, ambitious growth plans, and continuous improvement in operational efficiency. "Fabric has not just been a technological upgrade; it has been a transformational tool for our function," reflects Atallah.

Find out more about Chalhoub Group on LinkedIn and Instagram.