Excel and PowerPoint are good colleagues, theyunderstand each other and coexist very well. They’re supportive, hardworking and collaborative.Due to this, they believed that they’re the only ones who can provide any sort of analysis and visualisation. And our homo was in love with them, albeit a lot of struggle.
The stage is set for our annual ‘Customer Satisfaction Survey'. Tonnes of customer data over years flows into the analysis. Excel boasted of interesting formula and charts which the homo really liked. But, in the end, excel and power point had a bit of rivalry going on—bothwere jealous of each other’s features making it tough for the homo to seamlessly flow the data between. Excel was flexible but lacked visual appeal. Power point had lustre but lacked flexibility.
Our homo spent sleepless nights to ensure that data is correct and well formatted. But, during the presentations, there were mismatches. CSAT had many dissections and needed multiple viewsfor different stakeholders. Working on the same visualizations for different teams was the reason for this data mismatch. This dentedthe credibility of the entire process. This entire effortwas two months of hard work for both, and our homo. The homo started getting frustrated about the relationship and asked the duo "Why don’t you talk better to each other and make my life better?”. The Excel-PowerPoint duo had their own reasons not to.
After six years of struggle, a new person walked into the company. He looked stylish, well-built and had confidence in him. He was a fresher. Our homo noticed this smart guy and decidedto give him a try. He fundamentally questioned why should PowerPoint be the pair to excel? Why can it be a Power BI. He started a pilot. Every day, he brought in new charts, new patterns, to which the homo gave a try. Thus, Power BI and Excel teamed up with the past two years’ data to understand how quickly the analysis can be set up. Power BI grabbed everything and projected it almost live.
Now Power BI has the design of views even before the start of survey. It takes more and more data dimensions and provides brilliant correlations.Once the survey window closes and excel pushes the survey data, homo receives a first draft quickly.Power BIalso gives homo the comparison views with previous years. Hurray! The data is correct and can be drilled down at will. All the leadership gets data at the same time as per their span of control.
The difference this made? Work that used to take 2 months of effort came down to just 2 days!
Lessons Learned
1. Anything that takes time – is an opportunity for improvement. Embrace new technologies to improve
2. Proven and repeatedly practiced methods can be challenged
3. Everything doesn’t need to be a project. Improvements can happen by simple day to day experiments