Integrated business planning is not a project you kick off and close after a few months. It is an evolution in the thinking of your users.

Have a data, analytics, automation or AI challenge you'd like us to dig into? Get in touch, we'd love to hear about it. https://cloudsonmars.com/contact/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=description&utm_campaign=ibp

Marcin Kubica sits down with business analyst Grzegorz Ostwald to unpack integrated business planning (IBP), from departments working in silos to one planning process built on the same data.

Hear why one list of products instead of five is often the easiest first step, how a revenue target turns into sales, marketing and production plans, why an implementation never starts in all departments at once, and why educating users is often the hard part of the project.

Chapters:

0:00 Intro: IBP is not a one-off project

0:49 What IBP is: a process of making decisions

1:16 Inefficiencies before IBP: departments in silos

2:10 Excel, email and other tools instead of one database

2:43 From "my Excel" to one reliable database

3:24 Why KPIs give different results

3:45 First step: one list of products instead of five

4:10 The IBP universe: from strategy to operations

4:48 From a revenue target to production plans

5:29 The planning cycle: plan, review, reconcile

5:44 How an IBP implementation starts: analysis first

6:38 Start with master data, not all departments

7:03 A roadmap first, tools second

7:18 Is the business ready? Educating users

7:46 Current IBP work and wrap-up

Talk to Grzegorz about IBP requirements: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ostwaldg/

Talk to Marcin about your business challenge: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcinkubicaquality/

Follow Clouds on Mars on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/clouds-on-mars/

Subscribe for more episodes of Clouds on Mars Products

This video is provided for general information purposes only and does not constitute legal, tax, financial or other professional advice. Nothing herein should be relied upon as a substitute for advice from a qualified professional. Views expressed are the speakers' own. Product features, availability and licensing details may change over time, and any client results shown are illustrative only and are not a guarantee or promise of similar outcomes. © Clouds on Mars. All rights reserved. This content is the property of Clouds on Mars and may not be reproduced or distributed without permission.

When clients ask how to export your dashboard to Excel, the dashboard is not giving them what they need.

Have a data, analytics, automation or AI challenge you'd like us to dig into? Get in touch, we'd love to hear about it. https://cloudsonmars.com/contact/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=description&utm_campaign=uxui-in-bi-reports

Marcin Kubica sits down with UX UI Designer Natalia Przybyłkiewicz to break down why BI reports end up unused, and what changes when you design a dashboard with the client instead of for them.

Hear why correct numbers are not enough, how to answer a request for ten more charts on one page, why a change in Figma takes minutes where Power BI takes days, and how usage statistics show whether a redesign worked.

Chapters:

0:00 Intro

0:49 Why reports go unused

1:41 The export button warning sign

2:20 Designing with the client, not for the client

3:39 Handling difficult requests

5:06 Design first, build second

6:45 Measuring impact

7:34 Wrap-up

Watch the full episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/qO6ZIepgBjU

Talk to Natalia about BI report design: https://www.linkedin.com/in/przybylkiewicz/

Talk to Marcin about your business challenge: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcinkubicaquality/

Follow Clouds on Mars on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/clouds-on-mars/

Subscribe for more episodes of Clouds on Mars Products

This video is provided for general information purposes only and does not constitute legal, tax, financial or other professional advice. Nothing herein should be relied upon as a substitute for advice from a qualified professional. Views expressed are the speakers' own. Product features, availability and licensing details may change over time, and any client results shown are illustrative only and are not a guarantee or promise of similar outcomes. © Clouds on Mars. All rights reserved. This content is the property of Clouds on Mars and may not be reproduced or distributed without permission.

At FabCon Europe 2026, data engineering moved from writing code to defining the outcome. Estera Kot explains what that means for your data team and for governance.

Have a data, analytics, automation or AI challenge you'd like us to dig into? Get in touch, we'd love to hear about it. https://cloudsonmars.com/contact/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=description&utm_campaign=fabcon-agents

Marcin Kubica sits down with Clouds on Mars CTO Estera Kot to unpack her FabCon Europe 2026 takeaways, from agentic data engineering to governing AI agents in Microsoft Fabric.

Hear how the Data Engineering Agent behind Project Osmos plans and validates Apache Spark work, how the operations agent explains a pipeline that failed at 3 AM, why AI agents need their own identity like employees, and why a core MCP server that can delete workspaces calls for clear access policies.

Mentioned in this episode:

-FabCon Europe 2026 recap with Injae Park https://youtu.be/oPvHypIAwnM

Chapters:

(00:00) Intro and why FabCon matters

(01:18) Project Osmos: from Copilot to outcomes

(02:30) How the data engineer's job changes

(03:16) Agentic AI and new governance questions

(04:02) Observability and the operations agent

(04:38) A short break with Elton the dog

(05:17) Failed pipelines and pre-approved actions

(06:10) Governance: from people to agents

(07:03) Data agents, core MCP server, audit logs

(07:34) Treating AI agents like employees

(08:37) Where Clouds on Mars can help

(09:15) Mapping agents, policies and access

(09:48) Closing and the next FabCon locations

Talk to Estera about data platform architecture: https://www.linkedin.com/in/esterakot/

Talk to Marcin about your business challenge: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcinkubicaquality/

Follow Clouds on Mars on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/clouds-on-mars/

Follow the show for more episodes of Clouds on Mars.

Note: Clouds on Mars is a Microsoft Fabric Featured Partner. This episode was not commissioned or sponsored by Microsoft.

This episode is provided for general information purposes only and does not constitute legal, tax, financial or other professional advice. Nothing herein should be relied upon as a substitute for advice from a qualified professional. Views expressed are the speakers' own. Product features, availability and licensing details may change over time, and any client results shown are illustrative only and are not a guarantee or promise of similar outcomes. © Clouds on Mars. All rights reserved. This content is the property of Clouds on Mars and may not be reproduced or distributed without permission.

A Power BI report that used to take three weeks might take a day or two. That is Injae Park's estimate after FabCon in Barcelona, and it covers the front end only.

Have a data, analytics, automation or AI challenge you'd like us to dig into? Get in touch, we'd love to hear about it. https://cloudsonmars.com/contact/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=description&utm_campaign=fabric-apps

Marcin Kubica sits down with Data Platform Consultant and MVP Injae Park to unpack the Power BI news from FabCon in Barcelona, from prompt-built modern reports to the role of the semantic model.

Hear how Fabric Apps bring write-back and full workflows without embedded Power Apps, why Injae expects customer-facing apps on a Fabric data model, why he calls AI hallucinations largely a thing of the past yet still tests results without AI, and why the semantic model is where the value comes from.

Chapters:

(00:00) Intro

(00:54) Report building

(04:09) Data visualization

(05:50) Write-back

(07:57) AI hallucinations

(10:49) Semantic models

(12:11) Outro

Talk to Injae about Power BI and Fabric: https://www.linkedin.com/in/injae-park/

Talk to Marcin about your business challenge: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcinkubicaquality/

Follow Clouds on Mars on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/clouds-on-mars/

Follow the show for more episodes of Clouds on Mars.

This episode is provided for general information purposes only and does not constitute legal, tax, financial or other professional advice. Nothing herein should be relied upon as a substitute for advice from a qualified professional. Views expressed are the speakers' own. Product features, availability and licensing details may change over time, and any client results shown are illustrative only and are not a guarantee or promise of similar outcomes. © Clouds on Mars. All rights reserved. This content is the property of Clouds on Mars and may not be reproduced or distributed without permission.

An AI agent on an unprepared semantic model gives answers that are confident, clear and wrong. The fix starts with the model, not the prompt.

Have a data, analytics, automation or AI challenge you'd like us to dig into? Get in touch, we'd love to hear about it. https://cloudsonmars.com/contact/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=description&utm_campaign=ai-ready-models

Marcin Kubica sits down with Power BI World Championship finalist Michał Jezik to break down how to prepare semantic models for AI agents, from naming to verified answers.

See why duplicate fields and technical column names confuse an agent, how the AI data schema cuts its input context, why descriptions should stay within 200 characters, and how to spend one week making a model agent-ready.

This podcast is provided for general information purposes only and does not constitute legal, tax, financial or other professional advice. Nothing herein should be relied upon as a substitute for advice from a qualified professional. Views expressed are the speakers' own. Product features, availability and licensing details may change over time, and any client results shown are illustrative only and are not a guarantee or promise of similar outcomes. © Clouds on Mars. All rights reserved. This content is the property of Clouds on Mars and may not be reproduced or distributed without permission.

#PowerBI #MicrosoftFabric #SemanticModel #AIAgents #DataModeling #CloudsOnMars

Have a data, analytics, automation or AI challenge you'd like us to dig into? Get in touch, we'd love to hear about it. ⁠https://cloudsonmars.com/contact/?utm...⁠On most platforms you overpay by using too much. On Fabric, you can overpay by using too little. Marcin Kubica sits down with business unit lead Jakub Tamas to unpack Microsoft Fabric administration at scale, from capacity cost to tenant governance. See how one client was running around 50% more Power BI Pro licenses than it needed, why a 30% average capacity usage is not a result to celebrate, how the 40% reservation discount changes capacity sizing, and what an automation layer adds on top of FUAM.

One Clouds on Mars client scaled a Power BI model to 300 scenarios and a billion-row table. The report still loaded in a few seconds, exactly as the business asked.Marcin Kubica sits down with BI Competency Center Lead Radosław Górecki to unpack why Power BI reports and semantic models slow down, and how to fix them.Hear how Radosław breaks down citizen development gone wrong, the metric drift that makes two reports disagree on the same number, the tools behind a Power BI refactor assessment, and a model that scaled to 300 scenarios and a billion-row table without losing performance.Have a data, analytics, automation or AI challenge you'd like us to dig into? Get in touch, we'd love to hear about it. https://cloudsonmars.com/contact/

One Clouds on Mars client released millions of euros in cash just by connecting their SAP warehouse data to Microsoft Fabric. Marcin Kubica sits down with CTO Estera Kot to break down SAP to Microsoft Fabric integration, from architecture choices to real business use cases. Hear how Estera breaks down SAP Datasphere mirroring versus OData extraction, when the new BDC Connect connector makes sense, and real customer wins from faster financial closes to freeing up warehouse cash.
Have a data, analytics, automation or AI challenge you'd like us to dig into? Get in touch, we'd love to hear about it. https://cloudsonmars.com/contact/ Subscribe for more episodes of Clouds on Mars Products #SAP #MicrosoftFabric #DataIntegration #ERP #DataPlatform #CloudsOnMars