Edith Cowan University unifies analytics with Fabric, cutting costs 50%

Public universities face demand for analytics, but governance, operating models, and budgets haven’t kept pace. At Edith Cowan University, fragmented tools increased cost and risk and kept IT deeply involved in routine reporting.

ECU consolidated data analytics on Microsoft Fabric to simplify delivery and reduce manual effort. The unified, governed platform automated access through existing Microsoft Entra ID controls and enabled self-service analytics at scale.

ECU expanded governed analytics access to about 2,000 staff, cut platform costs by 50%, and reduced time spent developing self-service reports by 70% in six months. Weekly active users grew by about 3.5 times.

At publicly funded universities, data and analytics leaders are confronting a familiar conflict. Demand for analytics is surging across central administration and academic faculties, yet data operating models, governance, and budgets haven’t kept pace.

At Edith Cowan University (ECU) in Australia, a patchwork of data tools heightened this tension. Secure access and governance for these tools was complex and manual. Nontechnical teams struggled to get answers quickly. Platform duplication increased costs. Self-service access to data was limited because access and definitions varied by group. This kept the Data & Analytics team closely involved in dashboard and report creation and maintenance. At the same time, maintaining overlapping analytics platforms drove up cost in an environment where spend is closely scrutinized.

Continuing to meet demand under the existing model would have required more manual intervention from IT and data teams, increasing operational burden and governance risk without addressing the root cause. “We didn’t want to replace our tools with another tool,” says Harpreet Khalsa, Chief Data Officer at ECU. “We needed to simplify and consolidate analytics architecture and rethink how analytics are delivered across the institution.”

Without a change, ECU risked hitting a breaking point where governance gaps, manual reporting bottlenecks, and duplicated platforms would slow decision‑making and increase institutional risk. It was an operating model that simply couldn’t scale any further.

“Governance became the key selling point for us with Fabric. It’s all centrally managed, and Power BI picks up all those components of governance. As we add AI on top of it, it’s automatically picking up the same security and access controls.”

Harpreet Khalsa, Chief Data Officer, Edith Cowan University

Reducing implementation risk with governance

Rather than treating the situation as a point solution or tool replacement, ECU made a deliberate platform decision. This was an effort to avoid the hassle of managing growth across multiple tools.

The university selected Microsoft Fabric as a unified analytics platform, with Power BI as the standard reporting interface. “The ecosystem alignment with our existing investments in Microsoft Entra ID and Microsoft 365 reduced both implementation risk and change fatigue, which are critical factors in a university environment,” notes Mike Laytham, CIO at ECU. Altis Consulting supported ECU’s transition to Fabric by providing governance frameworks, Power BI templates, and a structured migration plan, helping ensure reports were rebuilt consistently and aligned with ECU’s governance model.

For staff already using Microsoft 365, the familiarity of Power BI lowers the barrier to adoption. “We saw a dramatic uptake because people didn’t feel like they were learning an entirely new tool,” says Khalsa. Weekly active use of analytics increased as more staff were able to access and explore data independently within established governance controls.

Fabric brought data ingestion, modeling, security, and reporting into a single environment. As a result, the Data & Analytics team could define shared semantic models and role-based access controls once, rather than maintaining parallel logic across multiple tools. This made it possible to expand access to analytics while retaining oversight and accountability.

“With Fabric and Power BI, every ECU employee automatically has the access they need. Licensing no longer limits who can create or use reports, and security is now fully automated through our existing Entra ID groups. Instead of manually adding and removing users, access updates happen instantly and consistently—which has completely streamlined how people get to the data,” says Angela Joewono, Data Engineer at ECU.

“With Fabric and Power BI, every ECU employee automatically has the access they need. Licensing no longer limits who can create or use reports, and security is now fully automated through our existing Entra ID groups.”

Angela Joewono, Data Engineer, Edith Cowan University

Redefining the role of the Data & Analytics team

The most immediate impact of the platform decision showed up in how analytics work was delivered. With shared datasets and semantic models managed in Fabric, the Data & Analytics team reduced the time spent building and maintaining bespoke reports. Business users were able to create their own views in Power BI using governed data, lowering dependency on IT for routine reporting.

“Previously, even if staff had access to dashboards, preparing and shaping data themselves was challenging,” says Khalsa. “Now the self-service is far better. My IT team can focus on trusted data and governance while analysts and teams build what they need.”

The unified reporting repository in Fabric means everyone works from the same definitions and data. “Finally having a single source of truth makes financial reporting consistent and accurate. We can spend time analyzing the data rather than building reports,” says Andrew Kong, Head of Financial Innovation at ECU.

Prioritizing stability in deployment

The move to a unified platform was incremental. The university worked with Altis Consulting to accelerate migration by drawing on its migration planning and governance frameworks. Altis migrated the existing reports while ECU’s internal team shifted heavy logic from report layers into governed, reusable Fabric datasets.

ECU consolidated reporting workloads into Power BI and retired duplicate analytics systems, sequencing the change to ensure continuity. It validated outputs while decommissioning longstanding tools, allowing teams to maintain confidence in the data throughout the transition.

By prioritizing stability and reuse over rapid transformation, the university reduced operational risk while modernizing its analytics foundation. “Fabric aligns strongly with ECU’s strategic intent to treat data as an institutional asset rather than a collection of disconnected reports and platforms,” explains Laytham.

“Fabric helps shift the conversation from ‘Can we get the data?’ to ‘What decision are we enabling?’”

Mike Laytham, Chief Information Officer, Edith Cowan University

Measuring progress

With Fabric in place, around 2,000 ECU staff and administration now access the data they need to make more-informed decisions. The time to build reports and dashboards has dropped by 70% in six months, freeing people to focus on higher-value work. In addition:

ECU cut costs by 50% annually by consolidating on one data and analytics platform.

Weekly active users have grown ~3.5 times (from ~100 to ~350) in six months.

Time to execute end-to-end financial reporting dropped significantly.

These outcomes weren’t the goal from the start, but they are confirmation that the new analytics operating model is working as intended.

For universities facing rising analytics demand without the governance and budget to match, ECU’s shift to Fabric shows what it looks like to break the trade-off. By consolidating platforms and standardizing access, the university scaled self-service analytics without scaling manual effort, turning a familiar higher education constraint into a sustainable operating model.

Laying the groundwork for AI

While ECU’s use of Fabric continues to mature, its platform decision offers a practical template for institutions grappling with similar pressures. Rather than accelerating toward new technologies prematurely, ECU focused on building platform discipline and governance first.

This approach shows that the first step toward AI-readiness isn’t adopting new tools; it’s establishing clarity, discipline, and governance in the platform itself. “Governance became the key selling point for us with Fabric. It’s all centrally managed, and Power BI picks up all those components of governance. As we add AI on top of it, it’s automatically picking up the same security and access controls,” notes Khalsa.

By unifying analytics and access controls, the university created an environment where innovation can expand without reintroducing fragmentation or manual overhead.

“Fabric helps shift the conversation from ‘Can we get the data?’ to ‘What decision are we enabling?’” says Laytham. For data and IT leaders facing similar pressure, ECU’s experience shows that simplifying the analytics platform is often a prerequisite for scaling access responsibly.

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