Business Monthly PL Review

Background

This was a request to create a report that showed the business data in a format that was easier to look at than Excel. The excel report had many columns to scroll across to see the information so when you got to one end you couldn't see or remember the information at the other end so had to scroll back. Using Power BI addressed this issue, and I could combine another complex report into the report, so it was possible to see both reports in one place. The Power BI report, when published to the cloud, will solve the current problem of large excel workbooks being emailed to many managers throughout the business.

Process

I imported the information from the Excel workbooks into Power BI and used the Query Editor to clean the data and transform the excel sheets into queries suitable for analysis. I also set Power BI to import from a folder so that the users could add previous reports to the folder so that Power Bi could import them so that they could view historical data in the report if required.

As people were familiar with the Excel report, I kept the format of the report to be like that excel report. I added in several waterfall charts to supplement the waterfall charts that were in the excel report. I then added in a KPI page using the KPI visual to show performance against budget. Also, I set comments from the excel reports as tooltips within the report so that comments were easier to view without losing the context for the comments.

Impact

The impact of this report is the easier means of viewing the information during monthly management meetings. The company will share the report using the Power BI service. So people will have easier access to the information and address the problem of emailing excel files to those who need to view the information. The ability to merge two large Excel reports into one Power BI report will be more convenient when reviewing monthly performance.