Power BI | Actionable reporting - part 1 - matrix visual

In today’s reality, creating reports that are just showing some numbers is not enough. Actionable Reporting is about getting insights fast: the faster you learn what’s happening with your performance, the faster you can decide what to do next.

When looking at a report visual, you should be able to tell right away if your performance:

1️⃣ is good or bad,
2️⃣ how good or how bad,

How much time does it cost you to answer any of those questions by looking at a traditional report visual?

A frequently used visual in Power BI is the matrix visual, which I regularly see in Power BI reports.

If you want to build a matrix visual, how much time do you spend on creating this visual?

……. you have to make additional measures (delta last year, delta last year in % …..) and then the whole formatting hassle to, for example,  adjust the cell layout with conditional formatting ……

Ok, finally you’re done. And now, look what you’ve made. Is this actionable & understandable for the reader…….?

There is a better way to make reports interesting, meaningful, understandable and actionable.

Here is an example of a matrix visual how this might look like in your report, a before vs after with the use of Zebra BI visuals and IBCS standards.

Why is the matrix visual not actionable?

  1. The column width should not be defined by the label length and goal variance column is simply too wide for its content.
  2. In column headings, the term “Sales” is repeated three times, which is redundant.
  3. Labels should be right-aligned while letters K denoting thousands should be in the chart title or subtitle.

Why using Zebra BI?

  1. Easy to use without having to create extra measures
  2. Build reports 10x faster, get immediate visualization of your data
  3. Automatic applying of IBCS standards
    1. Increase in speed of analysis by +46%
    2. Improvement in decision accuracy by +61%

Need help with transforming your data into actionable reports? As an official Zebra BI partner we can help you with this.

Studio de Jager 

Report & dashboard design studio

Official Zebra BI Partner | Power BI – Excel | IBCS Certified Analyst | Data visualization | Interim business consultancy | dashboard design

Let’s create better reports & dashboards !

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