Case Study
Sonata: When Project Forecasting Stopped Chasing Four Different Truths
A governed data foundation and AI agents connected delivery, finance, sales, timesheets, and resource questions.
Do not place a conversational AI layer over disputed data and expect truth. Governance and shared business definitions come first.
Independent systems created slow reconciliation, month-end surprises, disputed numbers, and weak visibility into revenue and margin commitments.
At month-end, a project manager should be explaining variance—not downloading spreadsheets and deciding which system is least wrong. Sonata connected delivery, timesheet, CRM, HR, and finance data into OneLake, then built domain agents so managers could ask about missing hours, billing, resources, and forecasts in plain language.
Microsoft Fabric and OneLake established governed data; domain-specific agents and Copilot let project, finance, and operations leaders query trusted data in natural language.
The figures are Sonata estimates in a Microsoft customer story. The sequence is the important part: unify and govern data, encode business logic, expose lineage, then add AI access. If every department brings its own definition of revenue, the chatbot will not settle the argument; it may simply join it with impressive grammar.