Power BI: your KPI’s in real time and one single place
As a Business Consultant, I have heard directly from owners and managers, all kinds of good and bad experiences related to the management of their companies.
The following story in particular caught my attention, because the problem that this owner of one of the largest distributors in Central America had is the same problem that many organizations have and it is related to the management of their indicators.
The story was as follows:
One of my priorities to properly manage my company has always been the visualization of indicators in real time (or as updated as possible). With executive, tactical and operational indicators updated daily, I can have a complete picture of the status of my company and know what questions to ask, who should I ask, what reports to request and what actions to take. However, having indicators up to date is not easy.
Previous Investments
For several years, consulting teams came and went to my company trying to redesign my work systems and implement indicators. Every time a new team arrived, my utopia of having a dashboard updated in real time seemed close. My consultants always implemented indicators of all kinds throughout the organization, from sales margins, production, cycle times and even the time that maintenance staff spent washing the bathrooms.
All my staff recorded information for the indicators, some in their notebooks, others in forms, Excel and, the most advanced, directly in my management system. When the indicators came to me, the amount of information and the level of detail that I saw was excellent. There was information and behaviors of my operation that until that moment I did not know and had not even imagined. There was only a small detail, the information I saw was from the previous week or even the previous month.
Wasted Effort
How am I supposed to make preventive decisions if I see the behavior of my company a week late? What advantage does this give me compared to my competition?
Updating indicators required so much time and effort from my people and when the information came to me, it was only a graphical summary of what I already knew had happened. It was an immense amount of information that just no longer added value. As if that were not enough, my people began to complain and even resign due to the excessive work and the additional hours that represented to be passing the information of the indicators to Excel, updating graphs, requesting the forms from the staff, etc
Indicators update became unsustainable!
After all the time and money invested, my frustration was at the top (just like the invoices from the consulting firm) and the competition was eating me alive … until I met Power BI.
The solution
One day another consultant contacted me and said: “I know what you need, I have the right tool where you can see your entire operation in real time. And, best of all, you can include the indicators that you decide, update them whenever you want and view them from your laptop, tablet or cell phone”. My first reaction was clearly one of rejection. I thought there were only two possible options for that tool: that it would be very expensive and the implementation would last at least 1 year, or that it would be one of the failed efforts made previously.
When they showed me an example of an executive dashboard made with this tool, immediately caught my attention. Visually it was unbeatable, the indicators were practical and accurate, the interface was very friendly to filter and segment as I wanted and I could see the operation from the most executive level to the most detailed possible if I wanted. When in addition to that, they told me that the tool was part of the Microsoft application suite… I decided to give Power BI a chance. With a few weeks of implementation, this team of consultants put together a personalized dashboard according to my specific needs. This dashboard is directly connected to my organization’s servers and systems, and I can update it, with a single click, anytime, anywhere.
From my cell phone, I can update my Power BI Dashboard and see my entire business operation in the car, at the gym, at a business meeting, at a family meeting, and anywhere. When I want to add a new indicator, I call my team of consultants and in a matter of days I have my Dashboard refreshed, it’s that easy.
This is one of the many Power BI success stories. Whether you are Head of a division, Director or CEO of a corporation, Power BI is the tool that is here to stay and is transforming management by indicators.
If you want to have a real executive advantage and visualize information before anyone else, in a practical and executive way, implement Power BI as soon as possible!
