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Anonymous
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Is Power BI right for our needs?

Hi everyone,

 

I have a couple questions on whether Power BI is useful for my company's needs. We currectly have thousands of SKUs in our system and I need a way to consolidate different data screens from our ERP system into one easy dashboard. 

 

Example: Our system requires the user to browse multiple tabs/screens to get all the info they need before making a purchasing decision: Inventory on a part (in 3 different warehouses), Sales History, Purchasing History, Open Sales Orders, Usage, etc.

 

The soluiton we need is one that can consolidate all the relevant data into one screen, BUT it must be on a per item basis. So when we review, let's say, a M3x3/8 screw - it will ONLY pull up the info relevant to that item. 

 

Am I better off with importing SQL data tables in Excel?

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION
Anonymous
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Several ways to attack this but try adding this custom visual to easily search for a specific datapoint..

 

https://appsource.microsoft.com/en-us/product/power-bi-visuals/WA104381309

 

Can also be added straight from the marketplace within PBI.

2019-11-06 11_07_48.png

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6 REPLIES 6
Anonymous
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I've introduced Power BI to my company for essentially this exact use case. My short answer is: absolutely yes, start experimenting. Using the desktop version of PBI is free and you will quickly find you're amazed at what you can do and how intuitive both building and consuming reports can be. Regarding the constraint that it must be on a per item basis.. this is one of the many things PBI does very well. The filter/drillthrough features have been a big game changer for how we can present data in different scenarios. Prior to my experimenting, we were doing tons of basic reporting using SSRS and Excel. Its a great feeling when you have upper management literally oohh'ing and ahhh'ing at a dashboard you built in PBI that was previously a flat, boring pdf file. Since you have the SQL experience and its extremely easy to use that as your data source, I think it would be a no-brainer to at least start playing around and see what PBI can offer.

 

 

Anonymous
Not applicable

One problem I've run into so far, is that the amount of items we have is inthe thousands since they are small parts. The drop down menu is definitely out the question. Do you know how to allow a user to input a item SKU # directly to the slicer to bring up data? Or do you have a link for a tutorial ?

 

Thanks for the reply!

Anonymous
Not applicable

Several ways to attack this but try adding this custom visual to easily search for a specific datapoint..

 

https://appsource.microsoft.com/en-us/product/power-bi-visuals/WA104381309

 

Can also be added straight from the marketplace within PBI.

2019-11-06 11_07_48.png

Anonymous
Not applicable

Hi @Anonymous 

Based on your description I would definitely say that Power BI can suit your needs. 
Whether you want to visualize information on a per item basis or per category, you can easily do this with slicers (filters). The slicers can also be adjusted to handle thousands of SKU's, as you can enable search in the slicers themselves, so that the employees can search for the values.

 

What I would look into however is how easily you can connect to your data in PowerBI. Are you using Microsoft ERP's or do you have the data in a database, excel sheets etc. If the data connection part is not a hassle, I would definitely say that Power BI can solve your problem.

Let me know if this helps!

Anonymous
Not applicable

Thanks AWA! This helps a lot in terms of trying to understand if Power BI is suitable for us. We have decently Excel savvy people within the company, but I find the sheer number of parts and tables that need to be referenced within Excel makes it slow and not particular user firendly for employees who are not the best with Excel. 

 

Is there a tutorial link you could point me to in regards to setting up slicers within a dashboard/report?

Anonymous
Not applicable

Hi @Anonymous 

Glad you found the explanation helpful!

There are plenty of online videos and tutorials explaining how slicers works. In reality, It's just a filter. So for instance, you can create a slicer with the SKU, where the user would need to enter a SKU, which would filter the entire dashboard to only show information about that particular SKU. 

In terms of references between different datasets, you would love PowerBI over Excel! Once you've uploaded the different sheets to PowerBI, you can define relationships between the tables. When you work with these tables, PowerBI will automatically make sure to join data depending on the relationsships you've set up.


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