Power BI: What are people using it for?

In the past few posts we’ve talked about how to connect to data and create basic reports, but a big question on a lot of people’s minds is why. Why would I take the time or invest in someone else to go through the process of connecting to data and creating reports?

Most people find it easier to tweak a process or document versus creating one from scratch and we find the same thing with software systems. Looking at how others already use the system allows you to visualize what you would change and how you could use the system within your organization.

Here are some ways customers are currently using Power BI along with a few example reports:

Sales Reports

• Track year/quarter/month/period to date progress versus previous progress. Are you on target to exceed or fall short?
• View sales by territory, location, salesperson and month. Focus efforts in higher sales markets and identify weaker areas for improvement.
• Show top x number of customers or the top x items you are selling. Identify frequent or larger customers and which items are the biggest sellers.

Job Cost Reports

• Track job P&L at a divisional level, with the ability to drill-down into locations, project managers and individual jobs. Are certain areas or people performing poorly?
• Ability to search for individual customers or jobs to quickly see how a job is progressing.

Service Reports

• View total service calls by division, area, month, type. Identify trends in where and why customers are contacting you.
• Track KPI’s such as average days to complete, average days to invoice, total calls completed. Customer satisfaction lies within service, are you meeting or exceeding set KPI’s?

HR Reports

• Track attrition by department, manager, job type, tenure, reason for leaving. Identify trends in where and why attrition is happening.
• Monitor employee reviews due dates and completion. Employee satisfaction drives attrition, keep managers accountable for completing reviews in a timely manner.

There are hundreds of other reports that customers are using, but these are report types we see consistently used across multiple companies. Hopefully, this will give you some ideas on ways you could incorporate Power BI reports into your organization.

-Jerica Coleman, CRM and Power BI Consultant