Powerful visualization of business KPIs with Power BI

Our customer is the nation’s largest home outdoor care company, serving more than 2.3 million residential and commercial customers across the United States and having revenues reaching up to $2 billion. Before contacting ABCloudz they had severe business reporting issues. The client’s KPI (key performance indicator) reports were extremely inconsistent and took too much time to be completed. These issues dropped the overall efficiency of the client’s reporting. Besides, the client did not have much time and resources for building a unified data center for reporting, while this would make partial report automation a much simpler task.

The client asked ABCloudz to build a comprehensive KPI reporting system with Power BI from scratch. Our team was chosen for this project because of the proven expertise in building complex PowerBI solutions. Besides, during the preliminary negotiations, we attracted the client with our proactive approach, technical understanding of their issues, and willingness to dive into the slightest details of their digital reporting system.

Read this material to know how the ABCloudz team helped the client handle this challenge and how we apply our custom Power BI configurations to develop complex and highly-automated reporting systems.

Customer’s reporting system and its challenges

One of the greatest challenges faced by the client was the lack of consistency in their reporting. The customer’s data was extremely distributed. There was information from third-party vendors, client usage data, online statistics, etc. All such information came from different sources, namely BigQuery, Google Analytics, Azure Synapse Analytics, SharePoint, MissionDB, Appfigures, etc.

Compiling all such data into a comprehensive report took the customer too much time. Sometimes, their managers had to spend more than two hours compiling a single KPI report.

There was no unified format for such reports, and there was no clear format for their visualization. During some high-level business meetings, company executives spent more time getting into the format of a report than discussing its actual output. This made such meetings and the overall reporting system extremely inefficient.

To take the reporting system to a new level, the client decided to utilize a Power BI solution. This interactive data visualization software is widely used to create consistent and informative dynamic KPI reports. However, the client did not want to spend too many resources and time on building a unified data center for reports. Although such a measure would enable our team to establish a simple automation pattern connecting a unified data center with reports, the client’s business requirement made us pursue an alternative architectural solution. Therefore, the ABCloudz team was required to work with multiple data sources and cooperate with the client’s third-party vendors to structure extremely distributed information flows in parallel with developing 10 KPI reports.

The ABCloudz team swings into action

At first, we had to analyze the client’s data infrastructure. The ABCloudz team of Power BI experts thoroughly researched data sources and the client’s basic information flows to come up with a clear vision of the task. We also clarified the client’s requirements on the format of the reports, including the most specific branding demands. This enabled us to come up with the most appropriate KPI report design.

Once the preliminary analysis was complete, we started working on each report consecutively. Our Power BI specialists treated each report as a separate unit. With a broad experience in building complex Power BI solutions, they managed to quickly and efficiently organize data flows from BigQuery, Google Analytics, and other data sources. All data flows were connected to dynamic reports to automate their updates. In addition, all reports were delivered in a consistent format with some world-class visualization functionality and strict adherence to the customer’s branding requirements.

The ABCloudz team relied on its previous experience in building interactive reports in Power BI to come up with custom system configurations. With these configurations, we managed to exceed the client’s initial requirements and add depth to the reports. Despite tight deadlines, we enriched the reports with interactive data slicers, specific descriptions, and the ability to review information from various perspectives. Therefore, apart from the executive level, these reports provide advanced analytical level features enabling the client to dig deeper into KPI and instantly retrieve the most valuable data. None of such features had been available to the customer before our effort.

See the scheme that explains these report levels. Here you can see the example of a drill-through that provides an additional information on more specific division of digital customer data, as well as sources of such data.

Finally, we managed to complete all the tasks ahead of schedule. The ABCloudz team delivered 10 complex KPI reports, supported with broad analytical functionalities and interactive features, in less than 6 months.

Client’s gains and priceless perspectives

Our effort improved the efficiency of the client’s reporting drastically. In particular, with our solution, the client:

• Received a complex reporting system in less than 6 months.
• Established well-tuned reporting despite data inconsistencies and the diversity of data sources.
• Received automation features that save time required for reporting. For example, a report that took a manager 2 hours can now be completed in only 10 minutes.
• Expanded their analytical capacities with our deep analysis and report interactivity features.

Our input brought the client’s reporting system to a new level. So, now the customer can be completely focused on the insights from interactive KPI reports and, thus, take maximum advantage of them.

Improve business reports with ABCloudz and turn insights into action

Contact us for a consultation about how to make your business reports from stone age to 21-century technology. Our team will be happy to bring your business forward with modern visualization and report automation technology, such as Power BI or other modern technologies that help convert data into actions.