Shortly think about this when you are working in such a department, of when you known people working in these departments…. What are the main challenges for Accounting & Finance departments when you would shift from Excel to Power BI? Many of you are experienced in using Excel, it is the most familiar tool. Here I sum some typical characteristics of accounting and finance people that are good with Excel:
- Every day/week/month they do the same tasks. For example download the bank statements, save them and past them in a large Excel sheet. Map the bookings to categories. Or other example: Every month end they download the same query from the financial reporting pack, past this in an Excel sheet, enrich the data with VLOOKUPS and add a filter on this data;
- (very) familiar with VLOOKUP, which is their best known tool;
- The usage of filters on range of cells is common;
- Most of them have not heard of the Excel add-ons Query Editor and/or PowerPivot;
- When the Excel report becomes slow they tend to accept the processor waiting time. Etc.
Enough of all these examples, since I guess you have become familiar with is. Let me show you what I believe are the main challenges when Power BI is the new toolkit for accounting, Finance & Control departments:
- You have to unlearn Excel (this is the most important challenge!)
- You have to improve on data quality and governance standards
- You have to think bigger
- You have to learn a new language (DAX)
- You need to have the time and capacity to explore this new great tool
- You have to collaborate in a different way with IT
- You have to find proper learning sources (on Youtube or call a well-qualified trainer)
- You have little idea who can support when you have questions
All in all enough reasons to keep using Excel 😊 So then please also read the bulletpoints below why I advice Finance & Control people to keep exploring PowerBI:
- PowerBI is the great tool that spreads your story/finding into the organization.
- PowerBI is a safe and efficient way to share information in an organization.
- PowerBI can be learned by non IT people (although data savvy skills help!)
- PowerBI slowly becomes a standard on CV’s, almost like your driving license.
- PowerBI enables you to dive into your data to see pattern/irregularities and go back to high-level
- Etc.
So now you may question how to overcome the challenges for starters in PowerBI… So also here some great bullet points that I advice:
- Start to think in tables (not in Excel cells anymore). Tables have rows and columns.
- Start small with building one simple report in Power BI desktop, slowly make this bigger
- Make sure that IT department arranges licenses, Power BI desktop and connections to sources. You (from the finance department) are the domain expert so you hare much more familiar with the data quality. You’ll develop the Power BI report
- See this article or these great YouTube channels (Enterprise DNA, Curbal, Guy in a Cube, or BI Elite)
- Start to use the so-called Query editor from the beginning
- Learn how you can share reports via Power BI Service (you and IT will discover the license element and safety aspects).
- Don’t use elements such as Direct Query, Live Connection, complex DAX functions, incremental refresh yet. This may come later.
With this bulletpoint style article I think I have given you (or at least when you’re from accounting, Finance&Control) an enthousiastic feeling about your new exploration: PowerBI.
Interested in how I became a Power BI Expert while also coming from a Finance & Control Excel background? Read my story here!