SCONTO Nábytek: Faster HR Reporting With Microsoft Fabric — 80% Less Manual Work

Moving beyond Excel patchwork

SCONTO Nábytek, a leading furniture retailer in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, was facing major challenges in HR reporting. The company relied on a fragile ecosystem of interconnected Excel files, often maintained with outdated scripts. The result: unreliable data, inconsistencies between the Czech and Slovak entities, and limited reporting usage outside HR.

To strengthen workforce management, leadership needed a reporting solution that:

• Minimizes manual intervention from HR and IT
• Is easy to maintain and scale
• Enables rapid development of new reports in Power BI
• Strictly separates sensitive HR data from other domains

Metadata-driven HR data mart

For SCONTO Nábytek in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, we implemented a solution on the Microsoft Fabric platform designed for simplicity, operational efficiency, and rapid deployment. The architecture minimizes manual administration, supports self-service, and can be easily extended to cover new data domains in the future.

We delivered a compact HR data mart, fully integrated with Power BI, with the following key capabilities:

Automated, Metadata-driven Processing

Workflows are controlled by metadata, eliminating the need for manual intervention. This includes automated generation of T-SQL ETL procedures and orchestration across notebooks, pipelines, and data flows — reducing errors and accelerating change deployment.

Dedicated Environment for HR Data

Sensitive HR data is managed in a separate Fabric workspace with dedicated capacity. This design ensures strict segregation from other business domains and compliance with both internal and regulatory security requirements.

Scalable and Easy to Maintain

The metadata-driven approach, combined with multi-layered data structures (L0–L2), enables clear governance, auditability, and the rapid addition of new reports without rewriting existing logic. New reporting demands can be met quickly and cost-effectively.

High Performance at Low Cost

By using Python notebooks in critical parts of the process rather than data pipelines, computational load was reduced by up to one-third. The solution delivers strong performance while keeping operating costs low.

“We were able to deploy metadata-driven management much faster than expected. Leveraging Adastra’s DWH Framework, I migrated the solution from the legacy environment and had it fully operational within just three days.”

– Vojtěch Dolejší, Senior Architect & Microsoft Fabric Expert, Adastra

Small project, big impact on corporate reporting

This project showed that even a relatively modest initiative can deliver a major step forward in efficiency and decision-making. Reporting has become a practical tool not only for HR, but also for the company’s leadership.

• 2–3x increase in the scope and granularity of HR reporting
• Reports actively used across the business – from HR to the CFO to store managers
• Substantial reduction in workload for HR and IT through automation and maintenance-free architecture
• Stable, predictable platform costs
• Clear path to expand into additional business domains

The architecture is built on automation, scalability, and metadata-driven design, with strict domain separation and robust data security at its core.