Imagine a situation where you’re about to plan a road trip along with your family. Now, you will have many questions associated with the trip before starting the trip. First and foremost will be the mode of transportation, which routes to take, and stops to take on that route.
To summarize the situation, one can say that everything requires a roadmap. Similar is the situation when you want to build a Power BI report from scratch. If the workflow while making the report is not clear, then it may lead to confusion and inefficiencies, and it is also possible that the purpose of the report may not be clear.
According to a survey from Gartner, businesses have increased the usage of analytics and business intelligence tools by 30% since 2019.
What makes a report great is its clarity, how interactive it is, and what message it is providing. Reports that are not up to the mark lack details like who the report is meant for, what the data source is, and how to keep the report secure.
Now let’s have a look at some of the key questions before you start to build your Power BI report.
Power BI Report Checklist: What to Ask Before You Begin
Even if you hire Power BI developers or BI experts, achieving the desired results requires understanding critical scenarios and conditions when building your business reports.
To ensure that your Power BI report passes all the checks of a great report, some questions are required to be answered.
Let’s explore them.
1. What is the purpose of the report?
The first and foremost step is to define the purpose of the report. What objective does it fulfill, and who does it target (the target audience of the report)? What things are going to be included?
Is your report going to track sales data, or are you creating it to analyze the productivity of a company (to analyze its key performance indicators)? Understanding this question and providing the solution to it accordingly keeps your report focused and impactful.
2. Who will be using this report?
If we compare things to a travel itinerary, they offer plans for a solo backpacker as well as family vacations. A Power BI report should also be made according to the audience it is targeted at. If we take an example, a higher-positioned individual like an executive, may need a more interactive report with more statistical data, whereas an analyst may need a report that has multiple features.
3. Which data sources are needed, and how should data be represented?
Similar to the situation, where you need fuel to run your car, data acts as fuel for your report building. Before you begin with the building process in a Power BI report builder, you need to understand where the data is coming from. Whether it is from an RDBMS, cloud storage, Excel sheet, or third-party APIs. Ensuring this will prevent any kind of confusion in the end.
Ensuring that each respective data is well placed in its field is very necessary. A messy and cluttered dashboard may prevent you from finding the specific data required at that particular instant. Ensuring data consistency and specifying the relevant data relationships are a must before analyzing the data.
4. Which KPIs matter the most?
Not all data in the report has to be of use necessarily. Each data has its own priority and one should always take care about including the key performance indicators in their report so analysis can be done accordingly.
What are the different parameters on which your business success depends? What streams are they related to (financial, customer-driven, or operational)? Your report should always be aligned with your strategic goals.
4. Which design will be most effective?
Some analytical users prefer a simple and static dashboard view. On the other hand, other users prefer an interactive dashboard with drag-down filters where parameters and stats change simultaneously according to the filter selected.
A good Power BI report builder will help you understand the design and layout according to your users and can help your report stand out. If you need help, you can take advantage of our Power BI consulting services.
6. How can the reports be accessed?
No matter how well-designed a report is, if it is not easily accessible, it loses its value. The question that arises is whether will it be available on desktop, mobile, or some other third-party platforms. After making the report, a must-have feature should be that it should be accessible in any corner of the world. (Ensuring cloud accessibility)
7. How can data security be maintained?
The most important factor to be considered while building a report is data security. Who has access to the reports? Providing role-based access control, setting permissions on the data that a particular person can access, and maintaining a record of audit tracks will help to have a grip over the data security of a report.
Conclusion
Just like when you begin a journey, planning a roadmap is important. Similarly, laying a set of ground rules is necessary when building a Power BI report. It requires the proper preparation, direction, and making the right choices before starting the process. By answering these sets of questions, you can pave your way towards creating a successful report and avoid obstacles in the way. This will make sure your data is helping businesses make better decisions.
So before you start making your Power BI report, ensure you have a structure in your mind related to the report. This trick can do wonders for your success.