Skip to content
Data & Reporting Let’s talk
Data & Reporting

Power BI Operations Dashboard

Operations reporting rebuilt as a Power BI dashboard on top of the existing sales and stock data, replacing a monthly workbook that four people maintained by hand.

Power BISQLData modelling
Power BI Operations Dashboard — Data & Reporting case study by Chetan Sharma
Client
Distribution business, NCR (via NodeAscend)
Year
2024
Role
Data modelling and dashboard build
Type
Analytics
The brief

What needed solving

The report was accurate but expensive: a month of copy-paste, four versions of the same file, and no way to answer a question mid-month without rebuilding half of it.

Approach

How it was built

(01)

Agreed the star schema before drawing anything: transactions in the fact, product, party and date as dimensions, and the definitions written down once.

(02)

Moved the manual formulas into the model, so a change in a business rule is one edit rather than a hunt through cells.

(03)

Built the views around decisions — margin by product line, movement by depot, ageing by party — instead of a wall of KPI tiles.

(04)

Set an explicit refresh schedule and a data-quality check that fails loudly when a day is missing.

Outcome

What changed

Mid-month questions get answered in the dashboard rather than in a queue behind a spreadsheet owner, and the monthly workbook became a monthly review.

ModelStar schema with written definitions
RefreshScheduled, with a completeness check
EffortManual workbook build removed
Source review and grain definitionStar schema and DAX measuresDashboard pages per decisionRefresh and quality monitoringDocumentation for the team maintaining it
Process

The same six stages,
every project

(01)

Discovery

Clarify the goal, users, constraints, current systems, success measures, and delivery risks.

(02)

Architecture

Choose the right structure, integrations, data model, security boundaries, and technology stack.

(03)

Design

Map important journeys and responsive states before expensive decisions are locked in.

(04)

Development

Build in reviewable milestones with clean code, documented decisions, and visible progress.

(05)

Testing & Launch

Validate functionality, performance, accessibility, security, and production readiness.

(06)

Support & Improvement

Monitor real use, resolve issues, and prioritize improvements using evidence.

Have something similar in mind?

Tell me the outcome you need and the deadline you are working to. I will tell you honestly what is possible.