KPI MTM Change Goals

[littlemojopuppy]

Hi!  I'm hoping for a little bit of help with something that has confounded me...

I have a dashboard that presents inventory balances and MTM change due to pricing and volume as well as total MTM change for inventory as a whole.

I'm presenting using the KPI visualization.  My goal is to present any increase is bad and any decrease is good.  Best to explain this in two parts...

With total inventory on order (the left most KPI) it works exactly as expected...indicator is current month balance, target is last month balance.  And I'm using the same current/last month logic with the remaining three but the logic isn't correct.  Look at MTM volume change...it's negative despite declining by $121.4M (because the previous month it declined a whole lot more).

I've tried creating a measure where [Change Goal = 0] but that results in this...

Can anyone suggest how to make the KPI indicator to show "good" if any decline and "bad" if any increase?

[v-lili6-msft]

hi, @littlemojopuppy 

I'm a little confused by your description. Do you want to show "Good" or "Bad" in the KPI visual?

and what is your expected output.

Sample data and expected output would help tremendously.
Please see this post regarding How to Get Your Question Answered Quickly:
https://community.powerbi.com/t5/Community-Blog/How-to-Get-Your-Question-Answered-Quickly/ba-p/38490

Best Regards,

Lin

[littlemojopuppy]

Right now, the "good" and "bad" is determined relative to the previous month, which is why MTM volume change is shown as bad (because while it declined, it didn't decline as much as the previous month).

Goal is ANY decline is good, and ANY increase is bad.  If anyone could provide an idea how to make this happen I'd appreciate it!

[v-lili6-msft]

hi, @littlemojopuppy 

Could you share some sample data or a simple sample pbix file and your expected output?

That will be a great help.

Best Regards,

Lin

[littlemojopuppy]

Hi!  Sorry for the delay...

Here's the visual for Inventory on Order and the data in it.

If you look at the data, there is an increase from January to February of $20.0M, which is "bad".  And that is reflected accurately.

Here is the KPI visualization and data for the MTM Volume Change for Inventory on Order...

Part of the $20.2M increase in inventory was due to holding ($121.4M) less stuff in inventory from January to February, which should be considered a "good" thing.  But it's showing up as "bad" because the change from the previous month (which is used as the target goal) was less than the previous month ($555.6M).  Note that the difference between the overall change of $20.2M and ($121.4M) change due to volume is the value of the inventory actually held at the end of February was worth $141.6M more than at the end of January.

I know this is a little confusing because inventory is an actual balance that can be seen, touched and counted.  But I'm trying to measure the change from month to month due to different factors or overall in the other three KPIs, not an actual inventory balance.

What I'm trying to achieve is ANY increase from month to month due to volume, pricing or overall is "bad".  And conversely, ANY decrease is "good", regardless of the change measured in the previous month.  I tried creating a measure [Change Goal = 0] to use as the Target Goal, and the result of that was the KPI visualization showing "(Blank)".

Tried doing some research but didn't find anything about absolute change being good or bad, just change relative to a previous month.

I hope my explanation is making sense!  Thanks for any help!  

[littlemojopuppy]

I apologize for editing this a couple of times...trying to explain something that is not very straight-forward as succinctly as possible...

[littlemojopuppy · Accepted solution]

Ok!  So I figured this out.  But I don't completely understand why this solution worked.  If anyone would like to offer an explanation, I'd love to understand why.

Solution:

1. Created a column called Change Goal set to a constant = 0
2. Created a measure called Inventory Change Goal = SUM([Change Goal])
3. Used the measure Inventory Change Goal as the Target in the KPI visualization.

And the expected results were achieved...compare this screen snip to the one at the very beginning of the thread.

Can anyone explain why?  It seems unnecessary to have to add a field to 60M records of data to achieve something so simple (not to mention wasted RAM).  Thank you!