Power BI is a key technology that can transform the way your organisation turns data into insight. But when rolling out Power BI there is a lot to think about to ensure you successfully enable your employees.
Microsoft position Power BI as a self-service tool for everyone where all you need is a license, but there is much more to a successful roll out. In this article we discuss 5 tips to successfully roll out Power BI.
1. Core reports and dashboards
One way to encourage and speed up the roll out of Power BI is to work with a specialist to develop a core set of reports an dashboards. This approach allows you to showcase the capability and quickly deliver value throughout your organisation. A key set of reports for each department will allow for wide use and access across your organisation.
2. Create Super Users
Super Users, that are properly trained to use Power BI, develop models and help build other Super Users. Select enthusiastic, technical people that have influence across your key departments. They will form the back bone of your report building capability.
This can be achieved by running training days for core groups of Super Users and setting up internal reporting forums to share knowledge, learnings and best practice. The training for these users should be more detailed than training of core users and cover things like governance, data and best practice.
3. Get your data into good shape
This might be the most important tip for success. Ensuring you have done the background work to create a single source of truth using a data warehouse. With Power BI you can create core datasets that you make available across different workspaces to enable reliable data to be easily accessed.
4. Think about governance
Once Power BI is rolled out through your organisation and you have dashboards and reports creeping up all over your business, it is important to think about control. Once a report or dashboard starts getting used in your organisation, you need to be confident that the data sources, data models and calculations are correctly showing what they should be.
There are a range of reporting tools and Power BI reports that help facilitate the monitoring and control of data in your organisation.
5. Company-wide roll out
It is important to plan a roll out wider than your Super Users. With minimal training, everyone in your organisation can start visualising data. It is important to think of a framework that will allow users the freedom to create dashboards and reports. At the same time, you should be thinking about governance of these creations if they reach into wider production.
If you follow the steps above you can transform how your organisation turns data into insight and ensure a successful roll out of Power BI.
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