INTHEBLACK December 2023/January 2024 Special Edition - Flipbook - Page 44
POWER UP
Power BI software is used to find insights within data.
For accountants, it can help to find the story within the
data, so that it can be shared with stakeholders as visual
business intelligence.
WORDS ADAM TURNER
I
n the age of data-driven decision-making, it
can be tempting to let the numbers do the
talking. Spreadsheets and simple charts can
often tell a powerful story to accounting and
finance professionals, but numbers need to be
transformed into a narrative to fully unpack and
share their insights. Here is what accountants
need to know about Power BI.
MICROSOFT OFFICE INTEGRATION
Power BI has established itself as an invaluable
business intelligence tool for creating detailed
reports and dashboards.
Rather than replace Excel spreadsheets outright,
Power BI can take advantage of hard work already
done in Excel, because the two programs are
integrated into Microsoft’s suite of business tools.
This allows Power BI to pull data directly from
Excel files.
Power BI can also pull data directly from a wide
range of other applications, such as SAP, Oracle
and Xero. One of Power BI’s greatest strengths is its
ability to ingest, standardise and cleanse a disperse
range of datasets. This can reduce the time that
accountants spend collating and polishing data,
and can increase confidence in data accuracy.
DATA VISUALISATIONS
Primarily designed for data transformation and
visualisation, Power BI helps accountants gather,
shape, analyse and visually explore data.
44 INTHEBLACK Dec 2023/Jan 2024 SPECIAL EDITION
It is more powerful than Excel graphs or pivot tables
for this purpose, partly because it is easy to filter, drill
down and look at issues from multiple perspectives.
“Don’t be afraid to get your hands dirty,” says
Dr Stuart Black, enterprise fellow in the department
of accounting at the University of Melbourne.
“Realistically, your worst-looking visualisation
is probably going to be more effective than your
best-looking table. You don’t need to be da Vinci –
you just need to effectively get your message across.”
DATA STORYTELLING
Power BI is best suited for when accountants need
to uncover insights and paint a picture, rather than
just present the numbers, Black says.
“As an accountant, is it your role to just tell
someone a bunch of facts? These days, your role
should be to present them with relevant facts, which
are framed and visualised in a way that helps them
make a better-informed decision,” Black says.
“This is where Power BI can be a very powerful
tool in a modern accountant’s arsenal. It lowers
the technical barriers to working with complex
data, uncovering insight and presenting it in an
accessible way.”
While Power BI allows accountants to help
people see the big picture, the ability to look at live
data in real time ensures that presenters can easily
dive into the details where required. Powerful filtering
options also make it easy to offer different views of
the same data to different stakeholders.
