Modernising Food Safety Analytics with Microsoft Power BI
Helping the Food Safety Authority of Ireland migrate approximately 130 business-critical reports to a governed, cloud-based Microsoft analytics platform — without disrupting the day-to-day work of over 100 staff
Challenge
The Food Safety Authority of Ireland is the State agency responsible for protecting public health through food safety regulation. Its reporting estate had grown up on SAP BusinessObjects — approximately 130 business-critical reports relied on by more than 100 staff across the organisation.
The platform was reaching the end of its useful life. Annual licensing costs were rising, the reporting estate had accumulated duplication over the years, and there was no clear route to the modern cloud and AI capabilities the organisation wanted to build towards. FSAI needed a migration that would modernise the platform without interrupting regulatory reporting that people depend on every day.
Our Approach
Rather than recreating 130 reports one-for-one, MedModus worked alongside FSAI’s data and analytics team to first understand what was actually being used and why. Reporting requirements were reviewed domain by domain, duplicate and redundant reports were consolidated, and the overall estate was simplified before anything was rebuilt.
Delivery was incremental. Each reporting domain was migrated, validated and handed over in turn, letting users move to the new platform gradually rather than facing a single high-risk cutover. Training, documentation and knowledge transfer ran throughout the engagement rather than being left to the end — the goal from day one was an FSAI team that could maintain and extend the platform independently.
The Solution
The new platform is built on Microsoft Power BI with Microsoft Fabric capabilities. Power Query handles data transformation, and a centralised Power BI semantic model provides a single source of truth — so business logic is defined once and applied consistently across every report.
A structured Development, Test and Production environment supports safe, governed report development, with access managed through Microsoft Entra ID. The result is a platform that is secure and controlled today, and positioned for the broader Microsoft Fabric capabilities — including AI-powered analytics — that FSAI can adopt as they mature.
Outcomes
~130 reports migrated to Power BI
Reduced licensing costs annually
Secure access via Microsoft Entra ID
Reports consolidated to remove duplication
100+ staff on the new platform
Centralised semantic model as single source of truth
Dev/Test/Prod governance structure
Fabric-ready foundation for future scale