Add more Power to Power BI – budgeting and forecasting

If you haven’t heard about Power BI, then it’s probably worth a Google. Power BI is one of the, if not THE, leading Business Intelligence (BI) visualisation platforms around. However it’s not ‘new’. In fact it has been around for quite a while now, however it’s only been in the last few years that corporations have started to understand the importance of having a BI solution for their businesses. And it’s been even more recently that some consultants have realised the importance of BI for their clients. Both of which have led to an explosion in Power BI articles and search results on Google.

As our name might suggest, at bi5 Solutions we understand the important of BI tools, and have done so since the early days. Rather than band-wagon jumpers, we have been involved and working with BI products of some sort since the beginning. Over the journey we’ve researched many different BI tools, and their related cousins Enterprise & Corporate Performance Management (EPM/CPM) systems. Over this time we’ve seen BI products come and go, some get bought out, and new ones appear. However none have had the weight of Microsoft behind them, and none have been as widely known as Power BI, and that’s a sure sign Power BI is here to stay.

Data is the new oil, but what is the new car?

More and more corporations are starting to understand the importance of data. Some have understood this for a long time, whilst others are a bit later to the party. However it’s never too late to start utilising and analysing your data. To do this many businesses are turning to Power BI as the most common and well-known product out there.  But few understand the importance of a ‘proper’ Power BI implementation.

We see many businesses start their Power BI journey by putting staff on a Power BI training course.  That is a great way to start scratching the surface of what Power BI can do, but Power BI is much more than individual dashboards, and there is much more to learn.  That thinking ignores, or diminishes, some of the main benefits of Power BI. With everyone building their own Power BI reports and dashboards, there can be just as much confusion caused by conflicting reported values as there was before Power BI.

Most businesses that want to head down the Power BI path do so as they have multiple and disparate data sources and systems which they want to integrate.  Often there is manual entry of data that is required to be displayed in a Power BI report, and very frequently this data is manually entered into a spreadsheet, or spreadsheets, which are then connected to the Power BI dataset.

As great as Power BI is it can only display data that already exists, that is, it is not possible to enter data into Power BI. The further down the road people go the more they ask of it, and the more it can start to replace existing Excel based dashboards and reports.  Inevitably users then start to wonder what it is capable of, can they enter data into it, and use it for budgeting and planning?

How to add more Power to your BI

Power BI is a BI tool, its even in the name, and BI tools in their pure sense are visualisation tools. That is they allow you to view your data in a visual way, think charts and graphs and maps.  But for all its useful features and high quality visualisations, it still has limitations. Some are to do with entering data as mentioned above, and others are with more simple things such as creating a P&L, a Balance Sheet, or a Cash Flow Statement. Without custom visualisations these can prove difficult in Power BI, if not impossible. We often find that Finance professionals still revert to using Excel when preparing their reports, as Power BI doesn’t give them the same abilities and flexibility to undertake the quick analysis and calculations they often require.

As great as Power BI is, these limitations prevent many from being able to fully embrace it. However, the great thing about Power BI (ie. Microsoft) is they tend to build a platform, which they continually enhance and improve, whilst also allowing other products to utilise and enhance with their own add-ons.

By utilising these other platforms in conjunction with Power BI that businesses can really enhance the benefits derived from their Power BI implementation.

For some of our projects the issue is around data-capturing or record-entry, to move away from reliance on a single spreadsheet with manual data entry. In projects such as these we can make use of the available technology within Microsoft’s Power ‘Stack’, such Power Apps, Power Automate to capture the data, make it available to Power BI, and reduce the reliance on a single spreadsheet.

Power BI Budgeting

However commonly the solution requires more than just data capturing. When discussing Power BI the topic of budgeting and forecasting often comes up.  After all, there is not much use in reporting actuals without some variance analysis to budgets of some kind.

For these situations we use a platform called Acterys.

Acterys is an all-in-one platform that leverages the high-quality front end and visualisations afforded by Power BI, and then greatly enhances its capability with its own custom Power BI visualisations and virtual data warehouse to drive it.

Through combining Power BI and Acterys, you can remove the limitations you are bound to encounter with your Power BI implementation, whilst at the same time providing you with the ability to expand your Power BI beyond the limitations of pure BI platforms and into the EPM/CPM space. For the lay-person that means use Power BI for budgeting and forecasting.

Acterys partners with Microsoft, and provides you with a virtual SQL server data warehouse in an MS Azure environment, and then provides a simple connection to Power BI where you can create your dashboard and reports.

Data from all your disparate sources are integrated within this single SQL server data warehouse. This provides you with a single source of the truth with which to drive all your reporting and planning needs, either in Power BI, Excel, or any other reporting product you wish to use.

Data Entry in Power BI

One of the most impressive features provided by Acterys is the Power BI custom visuals that come with it. These custom visuals provide the end user with the ability to enter data directly into Power BI reports, and have this data written back to your data warehouse. This means the data is then ready for use elsewhere, in other systems which are using this same datawarehouse.  With the ability to enter data, both text and numerical, it is then possible to go one step further and build a full driver-based budget and planning system, using Power BI as your front-end user interface.

Acterys also provides an Excel add-in allowing you to easily connect your datawarehouse to Excel, and provide writeback.  This allows you to enhance existing spreadsheet reports and budget models, and also provides the Finance team with the familiarity and functionality of Excel, yet still ensuring they are using the exact same data as that driving your Power BI reports.

To find out how you can, and should, be adding the Power to your Power BI implementation have a chat with us today.