Power BI Implementation Plan: Best Practices and Worst Pitfalls

Power BI Implementation Phases and Best Practices

Power BI starts and ends with stunning dashboards and reports like this one:

Right?

Actually, not quite.

Yes, the end goal of many Power BI projects is to create simple, clear, and pretty reports that teams will use to understand data.

But the journey to get there involves several vital steps that lay the groundwork for success. These steps are what we will call the phases of Power BI implementation.

Snippets of best practices will be chipped into every phase.

Phase 1: Understanding How You Get a Return on Investment

Where does the value of Power BI reports come from? In my opinion it comes from 3 potential project benefits:

• You identify a business process that you want to manage and KPIs that help you manage it. A dashboard then helps you better manage this process which translates to cost savings or increase in revenue.
• You automate your current reporting and save working hours. This saves you labor costs and allows your staff to invest their time elsewhere.
• You replace your current software with Power BI and save on their subscription costs.

As you see, it is not Power BI itself, nor the hype around it that will make your business successful. Rather, it’s how you use Power BI to solve your business’s unique needs. So, before investing into Power BI implementation, you need to understand what benefit you would get from the investment.

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At this stage, you should ask yourself:

1. What business processes do I need to manage better? Would Power BI make a tangible difference to how I manage these processes?
2. Are there business processes that Power BI may help me automate?
3. How many people in my team would be positively affected by this Power BI implementation?

Your answers to these questions will guide the rest of your Power BI implementation.

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