Power BI As a Central Source of Truth

Summary

Welcome to the FP&Automation newsletter.

In this edition, we will be covering the following items:

1. The cost of not having a clearly defined central source of truth

2. The value of using Power BI as a source of truth

3. What FP&A can look like when everyone has (controlled) access to the right numbers

4. How you can use Power BI for data integration and consolidation

What FP&A Looks Like Without a Centralized Source of Truth

Many finance teams find themselves dealing with different data sources in different formats and having to repeatedly solve the problem of extracting, transforming, and making sense of the data.

1. The Team is in Excel Hell: Important analysis is reliant on analysts building ad-hoc pivot tables and charts – and then is exporting these to PowerPoints and PDFs

2. Repetitive, Frustrating Tasks Sap Energy and Morale: The team is reactive and spends large amounts of time returning to various data sources to re-assemble and reconfigure analysis that they performed earlier

3. Slow Analytics Turnaround and Delayed Reporting: Time-to-insight is significantly delayed as the team has to carefully reconcile and tie-out numbers every time they are asked for reporting figures

4. Lack of Version Control and Trust in Data: Multiple versions of various reports are in circulation among stakeholders and the leadership team has to verify if they are looking at the latest numbers

What FP&A Looks Like with Power BI as the Source of Truth

Power BI gives you the ability to streamline and standardize your data transformations and data integration. Your team can build a sustainable “foundation” on top of which it can automate the majority of analytics and reporting – saving the ad-hoc analysis for truly results-driven cases when it is needed.

1. The Team Is Equipped for Modern Analytics/Reporting: Power BI dashboards are deployed to the cloud and have a “live” connection to the underlying data sources, with scheduled refreshes automatically transforming and “cleaning” the data for your team’s use.

2. The Majority or Repetitive Tasks Are Automated/Streamlined: Your team has taken an audit of the most frequently asked questions by stakeholders and have configured dashboards to answer them with the click of a button.

3. Accelerated Time-to-Insight and Timely Reporting: Your team’s reporting becomes the central source of truth for management decision-making and serves as the starting point for more advanced analytics and ad-hoc exploratory analysis.

4. Strong Version Control and Trust in Data: Senior leaders all know where to look to see the latest numbers and they trust the data they are looking at. Data quality tools are leveraged to ensure you have a trusted, centralized source of data for all analysis.

Power BI is a Valuable Tool in the FP&A Toolkit – If Used Correctly

Recognizing the exact pain-points and frustrations your team and stakeholders are dealing with and using that information to inform your strategy will be critical to your success with Power BI. Take an audit of the key morale-draining tasks that your team spends time and effort on. Look for questions that your stakeholders are frustrated by trying to answer. These are the “low-hanging fruit” that your team needs to tackle first. Many of our clients are consistently surprised by how quickly these initial items can make a difference to the team’s processes, morale, and the quality of work they can deliver.

To help you achieve this, there are a few points to keep in mind:

1. Power BI has a diverse set of “out-of-the-box” integrations, to help you source your data. There are also a variety of 3^rd party connectors and integrators to ensure you can access everything you need.

2. Dashboards can be deployed to the cloud with scheduled refreshes of the latest data – including Dataflows/Power Query data transformation and cleaning, so your team is looking at timely, accurate numbers.

3. These steps are relatively straightforward to implement for strong Excel users and the ROI from these tasks is among the highest you can get with a very minimal investment.

In the Next Newsletter

We will learn about why you need to implement controls and workflow in FP&A.