Many smaller businesses already hold the information they need to make better decisions, but it is spread across systems, spreadsheets and reports that take time to rebuild every month.
Microsoft Power BI is a reporting and analytics service that can bring agreed data together and present it through interactive reports. The real value comes from making a business question easier to answer, not from adding more charts.
Start with the decision
Before building a report, define what somebody needs to know and what they will do with the answer. Useful starting questions might include:
- Which work is profitable?
- Where are requests or projects becoming delayed?
- Which customers, services or locations are changing?
- How is performance moving against an agreed target?
Check the data can be trusted
A polished report cannot correct inconsistent source information. The business needs to agree where each figure comes from, who owns it and how often it should be refreshed.
This may reveal that fields are completed differently, duplicate records exist or important information is not captured at all. Resolving those issues is part of the reporting project.
What Power BI adds
Power BI can connect to suitable data sources, prepare the information and present it in a repeatable report. Users can filter the view, explore detail and use the same agreed definitions rather than maintain separate versions of a spreadsheet.
Keep the first report focused
A good first project answers one useful set of questions for a defined group of people. That makes it possible to test the data, confirm the value and improve the design before the reporting grows.
Plan access and ownership
Reports may contain commercially sensitive or personal information. Access should follow the employee’s role, and somebody inside the business must own the meaning of the figures. Licensing and ongoing maintenance should also be agreed before the report becomes part of a management routine.
baseMSP’s Business Technology service begins with the outcome, reviews the available data and scopes a focused reporting project before anything is built.
Further reading
Microsoft provides a current overview of the reporting, sharing and administration options in What is Power BI?
