Power BI | Actionable reporting - part 8 – line chart visual

Do you use line chart visuals in your report? How effective are they on a dashboard? Are they easy to read and to understand for the viewer?

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:

  1. is it good or bad
  2. how good or how bad
  3. why is it good (or 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 line chart visual. Look at the left visual.

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 line chart 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 line chart visual not actionable?

  1. There is no content in the chart, the comparison as a variance is missing
  2. Avoid external legends and remove gridlines
  3. Redundancy in the title
  4. Avoid using axis breaks
  5. Letters M denoting millions should be in the chart title or subtitle and not in the data labels
  6. Use abbreviations for the different scenario’s, AC for current year and PY for previous year

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.

studiodejager.nl  | 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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