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CASE STUDY
Turning Insights into Action WITH Data-Driven Decisions
How one of Sweden’s largest public housing companies built a smarter, future-ready reporting foundation
BACKGROUND
One of Sweden’s largest public housing providers, with 390 employees and responsibility for nearly 27,000 apartments and 1,000 commercial premises, recognized the need to modernize its approach to data management and use to support its long-term strategies.
The organization’s priorities include being a trusted landlord, expanding access to affordable housing, promoting social responsibility, advancing sustainability, and building an efficient and engaged organization. Achieving these ambitions required stronger insights and more effective ways of working with data.
CHALLENGE
As one of Sweden’s largest public housing companies, the organization relied on vast amounts of data spread across multiple systems. Over time, this setup became fragmented. Reports were tied to individual datasets, processes were inconsistent, and maintaining accuracy required heavy manual work. The result was slow, inefficient reporting that limited flexibility and decision-making.
As a publicly owned company, it also operates under an “open by default” data policy—meaning most information must be accessible to all. This created a delicate balance between maintaining transparency and safeguarding sensitive data.
Employee adoption presented another hurdle. Many staff members were unfamiliar with modern data tools, and the existing systems didn’t encourage a data-driven approach to working. The new approach, therefore, needed to combine powerful capabilities behind the scenes with an intuitive user experience.
Finally, the organization faced significant data redundancy. Multiple overlapping datasets and models not only created confusion and inefficiency but also risked inflating cloud storage and transfer costs as the company moved to a modern, cloud-based environment. Reducing duplication and improving performance were essential to achieving both operational and financial efficiency.
Approach
To tackle these challenges, the company took a structured, end-to-end approach to rebuilding its reporting foundation.
Using Databricks, data from multiple systems was consolidated into a single, central platform—eliminating duplication and ensuring that every report was based on reliable, high-quality information. Microsoft Fabric then provided a clear framework for organizing, managing, and scaling this data, making it easier for teams across the organization to access what they needed.
Reporting was reimagined entirely in Power BI, with dashboards shaped by employee feedback to ensure relevance and ease of use. Built-in security controls, such as object-level permissions, enabled the company to meet its open data obligations while maintaining the protection of sensitive information.
To support adoption, employees participated in hands-on workshops that built confidence and familiarity with the new tools, encouraging a shift toward more data-driven decision-making.
This modern solution not only streamlined and strengthened data governance but also consolidated models and reduced the number of datasets, improving performance and cutting cloud costs. Behind the scenes, the combined power of Databricks, Microsoft Fabric, and Azure now provides a robust, scalable foundation to support future growth and innovation.
Benefits & RESULTS
The benefits were quickly felt across the organization:
Together, these improvements helped create a stronger data culture—one where employees can access the right insights at the right time to make better decisions.
Supporting Goals
This transformation also plays a key role in the company’s “40-4” initiative: a move toward a four-day working week without reducing productivity. By automating manual tasks and making accurate data more accessible, the new reporting foundation enables staff to work smarter and focus on what matters most.
What’s Next
With its new data and reporting foundation in place, the company is well-positioned to drive innovation, improve efficiency, and confidently turn insights into action.
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