Success Story

From Two Weeks To Minutes: HFW Companies Rebuilt Its Financial Package On Microsoft Fabric

<30 mins Data ready
to report
100 Tabs Package tabs automated, from 64 in Dec 2025
2 People Finance capacity redirected
1 Model Unified chart of accounts across 14 firms

**Shreena Fulani,** Director of Business Intelligence, HFW Companies

On day one after month-end close, the Financial Package is already built. The finance team's job shifts from two weeks of manual assembly to reviewing, adjusting, and signing off. The data platform on Microsoft Fabric behind it runs the entire cycle automatically every night. The team's time now goes where it creates the most value: strategic analysis, scenario modelling, and partnership with the business on the decisions that move the company forward.

This is the second chapter of HFW's data journey. In the first, the company unified thirteen ERPs into a single analytics foundation on Microsoft Fabric in ninety days. In the second, that foundation was extended into the heart of how HFW runs its finance function. Since then, the group has continued to grow, with one further acquisition bringing HFW to fourteen business units by April 2026.

A Financial Package That Leadership Depends On

HFW Companies is a national group of architecture and engineering firms that has expanded rapidly through acquisition. Every month, the finance organisation produces a Financial Package for the board and investors. It is one of the most visible documents the company produces, and the standard for accuracy is absolute.

The process that produced this package had evolved alongside the business. Three full-time members of the finance team spent two weeks every month collecting data, reconciling it manually across fourteen business units, and stitching it together in Excel. The team delivered what leadership needed each month, though the work consumed significant capacity that the executive team saw could create more value elsewhere.

14 Business Firms

Collect

Reconcile

Assemble

Excel Financial package

2 People
2 Weeks
Every Month

Leadership Set The Bar Before The Technology

The transformation started with a conversation about expectations, not about tools. The executive team agreed on three principles that would shape every decision that followed:

Every number in the Financial Package would have one unified definition.
Accuracy would be held without compromise.
Finance would own the definitions, with technology following the business rules rather than the other way around.

Shreena Fulani, Director of Business Intelligence, led the transformation on the HFW side, working with Landon Bradford, Business Intelligence Analyst, to extend the Medallion architecture established in the first phase of HFW's data journey into a finance-grade data platform on Microsoft Fabric.

Michelle Huber, Senior Vice President of Finance, and Becky Garner, Accounting Manager, drove the accounting and finance side of the transformation, working hand in hand with the BI team. The depth of financial knowledge they brought shaped how every definition, mapping, and reconciliation rule was designed, and turned a technical platform into a finance-grade one.

Typical Approach

Technology Leads. Finance Adapts.

Technology DecisionPick the platform
Business AdaptsFit the rules to it
Ongoing FrictionArgue about numbers
Definitions Drift. Trust erodes.Manual effort never ends.

HFW Approach

Finance Leads. Technology Follows.

Agree the principlesExecutive team alignment
Finance owns definitionsRules, mappings, and logic
Platform FollowsBuilt to the rules, not the other way around
One source of truth, trusted by allAutomation amplifies control

A Finance-Grade Data Platform On Microsoft Fabric

Data flows directly from every ERP into Microsoft Fabric. Every chart of account mapping and every manual adjustment lives in one governed place, where finance maintains the logic behind every consolidated number. From that single source of truth, the platform runs:

Automated reconciliation across all fourteen business units, and every new acquisition onboards into the same framework
Validation rules at every stage of the pipeline
Trial balance checks every month
A completeness and accuracy check before any number reaches a report

Raw
LakeHouse Transformed
LakeHouse Transformed
LakeHouse

The platform follows the Medallion architecture from HFW's first data foundation. Raw data lands first, then a unified business layer governs how revenue, cost, account, entity, and period are interpreted across the group, and the semantic model that drives the Financial Package sits on top. Inside that unified layer, Fabric Planning with its Data Management capability (formerly PowerTable) holds every chart of account mapping and every manual adjustment under an approval-based policy. Changes are proposed, reviewed, recorded, and traceable. The metadata that defines how the Financial Package comes together is owned by finance and ready for audit at any time.

**Rebecca Garner,** Accounting Manager, HFW Companies

A validation framework sits above the foundation. External trial balances are kept apart from the transactional systems, and the platform reconciles its own trial balance against them every month. A dashboard tracks the process, and the moment a GL account breaks tolerance, it is flagged at the account level with full lineage back to source. The finance team sees the issue, traces it, and resolves it well before it reaches a report.

On top sits the Power BI semantic model that drives the Financial Package. Excel connects to it live, so the P&L, balance sheet, and cash flow all draw from one governed source. The pipeline refreshes every night, which turns the financial close from a monthly event into any-day visibility. Leadership can open the package on any day of the month and see where the business stands, confident that the numbers have already been reconciled, validated, and signed off by the platform.

Excel Is Still Where The Last Mile Of Finance Happens

Excel remains the place where ad hoc analysis gets done and where the last mile of finance work lives at HFW, and that was never going to change. What changed is what Excel is now connected to. Anyone who has produced a monthly Financial Package in Excel alone knows the risks that come with it: manual stitching across multiple files, broken links, reconciliations done by hand, and updates redone every time a number moves. With a governed foundation underneath, those risks stay out of the process. Every number in the file flows live from the semantic model, every calculation refreshes from a single trusted source, and what needs to land in Excel now lands in minutes.

Excel: Same Experience, New Foundation.

Same Excel, Different Foundation.

Excel stays where finance works. The risk is removed from underneath.

Before

ExcelFinancial package

Firm 1 Firm 2 Firm 3 Firm 13 Firm 14

Broken links
& formulas
Multiple files and versions
Manual updates and copy/paste
Manual
Reconciliation.

Now

Built in
Microsoft Fabric.

ExcelFinancial package

Semantic Model

OneLake Single source of truth.

Firm 1 Firm 2 Firm 3 Firm 13 Firm 14

Live refresh (automated)
Reconciled and validated
Audit trail and lineage
Governed and secure

New Acquisitions, Reporting-Ready From The Start

HFW grows through acquisition. The same foundation that powers the Financial Package now absorbs new companies directly into the reporting cycle. The company acquired in April 2026 was included in the Financial Package the same month, as acquisitions have been in the past. What changed is the work behind it: each new company’s accounts are now mapped to the HFW global chart of accounts and run through the same automated reconciliation and validation, rather than reconciled manually.

One Onboarding Step, Not Manual Rework

The reporting timeline did not change. What changed is the work that sits behind it, and how much of it repeats with every new company.

Acquired
Extract & clean
Map & adjust
Validate & Reconcile
Confirm & close
Reported

Before

Repeated In Full For Every Acquisition

Acquired

Reported

Now

One Onboarding Step, Run On The Framework That Already Exists

Each new company’s accounts are mapped to the HFW global chart of accounts, then run through the same reconciliation and validation as every other business unit.

**Landon Bradford,** Business Intelligence Analyst, HFW Companies

Why It Worked

Transformation Area	Before Microsoft Fabric Plan	After Microsoft Fabric Plan
Financial Package production	2 finance team members, 2 weeks per month, manual stitching across 14 ERPs	Nightly automated refresh, under 30 minutes on day one
Data ownership	Finance capacity spent assembling numbers	Finance owns definitions, reconciliation rules, and analysis
Reporting cycle	Numbers reached leadership up to two months after the period	Numbers available on day one after close
Accuracy assurance	Manual reconciliation, dependent on individual care	Automated reconciliation and validation every night, with trial balance checks every month
Acquisition integration	Manual account mapping and reconciliation for every new company	Included in the Financial Package from the month of acquisition, through one onboarding step
Role of finance	Assembling and reporting	Analysing, modelling, and partnering with the business

Proof In Results. Clarity In Impact.

Before vs. after across key areas that matter most.

Data
Availability

2 Weeks

<30 Mins

Reporting
Cycle

Up To 2 Months

4 Weeks
(Reducing)

Accuracy
Assurance

Manual

Automated

Acquisition
Integration

Manual Rework

One Onboarding Step

Role Of
Finance

Assembling &
Reporting

Analysis And
Partnership

Technologies Used

Fabric
Fabric Planning
Power BI
Microsoft Excel

Data pipelines
Dataflows Gen2
Lakehouse
SQL

A Partnership That Went Beyond Technology

HFW's finance team partnered with Data Crafters throughout the build. Alongside the Fabric implementation, Data Crafters supported Michelle and her team on the process and finance side: designing the monthly workflow, translating accounting standards into reconciliation rules, and bringing finance-industry experience into the definitions themselves. The platform and the finance logic were built together, which is why the result reflects how HFW's finance function actually works.

What's Next

With the Financial Package running on a nightly cycle, HFW is preparing the next wave of work: Data Agents that answer finance questions conversationally. Deeper scenario modelling for acquisitions. Extension of the same foundation into additional finance and operational domains.

Modern Finance Starts With Data You Can Trust

Shared definitions, governed data and AI working from numbers, finance can stand behind.

Microsoft Fabric + Power BI

Your Finance Team Backed By Executive Sponsorship

The Outcome One Set Of Numbers, A Shorter Close.

Shared revenue
definitions
Reports reconcile
before sign-off
Less manual work
every close.
Audit ready
governance

We do not wait to standardize every source system first. We build the model to work with what you already have.

The Lesson for Finance Leaders

AI is only as good as your data, and in finance the bar for data is absolute. The value of a modern finance platform comes from unified definitions, clean reconciliation, clear ownership, and the steady removal of manual steps from the reporting cycle.

Microsoft Fabric and Power BI make the build possible. A finance team backed by an executive team that holds the standard makes it real.

Whether an organization runs fourteen ERPs or one, the path is the same.