Modelling Your Data In Power BI
Once you have gathered your data from the many live data sources, cleansed it and quality checked it you will need to prepare it for consumption in Power BI dashboards.
If you would like to get a bit more insight in to the full data journey to get from yopur source data to modelling to the visualisations stage take a look at our Business Intelligence and Data Driven Decions Making roadmap. Our Power BI consultants are also on hand to chat with you about your requirements.
Data Shaping & Modelling
The shaping and modelling stage of your business intelligence journey is where we start to build the relationships between your different datasets and implement the business logic that will feed reports and dashboards. How often have you seen multiple reports based on the same underlying data source, but different versions of the truth being presented due to multiple interpretations of key business terms such as Gross Profit or Stock Value, and varying calculations being used in different reports.
The business model will form your definitive central, "one-truth" source for business calculations and logic. The purpose of the model is to eliminate the need of any data preparation or formulae construction in the reporting environment. We define all of the business logic in one place to ensure that all reports and dashboards are based on a single, validated, consistent and quality dataset.
- The model will present the language of the business, not technical language, and will be presented in such a way to make it easy to facilitate self-service business intelligence.
- The model is where we will define all of your business logic, measures and performance metrics.
Relationships
The following example shows relationships between weather tables imported via a Met Office API.
Measures
The business perfromance metrics are created with the DAX language:
Self-Service Drag & Drop
The Tabular Model will cater for pre-defined reports and dashboards and self-service analysis requirements. Field names reflect the every day business language, raw fields are hidden with formatted and validated logic built into measures for an easy drag and drop environment for building dashboards.
Modelling Your Data - Where Do You Start?
Start by contacting PTR and we can take you through your options. We can assess your requirements and put together a per day or project based consultancy proposal to get you to where you need to be. It is vital that you see an early return on investment without committing to an extremely high budget and the best way to do that is to let us work with you to break your requirements down into manageable and affordable stages.
We are a big fan of Proof of Concepts (POC) where we will work with you to choose an initial Power BI requirement that can be used to test the water and gain stakeholder confidence. A POC can help you to:
- Prove a chosen data platform architecture as fit for purpose
- Educate and equip your team with the new skills they will need going forward
- Carry out sizing and capacity planning to assess the full cost and budget implications
- Provide a relatively quick set of results to demonstrate the potential Return on Investment and benefits of a Power BI implementation
Following a successful POC the full data analytics and business intelligence roadmap can be planned. By looking at the long term goals we can pull out the key business processes that need to be brought in to your Power BI solution, and in line with your data strategy can build the roadmap and timeline to start the journey.
It will be a journey, and the direction may from time to time change direction as business priorities change, but with a strong data Strategy and a well thought out roadmap these priority changes can easily be accommodated.
Whatever your Power BI challenge our Power BI Consultancy team are here to help you. Call our Sales Director, Keith Doward on 0118 979 4000 or email him at keith.doward@ptr.co.uk for further information about our Business Intelligence Consutancy services.
About PTR
PTR have held Microsoft accreditation since 2005, currently holding Gold Partner Status for Data Platform and Data Analytics. We have been working with clients on Data Strategy, Analytics and Business Intelligence solutions for over 30 years across a wide range of platforms and vendor solutions. We pride ourselves on combining first rate technical skills with an ability to communicate complex ideas, technology, and data effectively, and working with clients to develop a deep understanding of their business processes and data objectives.
