Power BI is sexy. There’s nothing out there that makes end-of-process reporting as easy, or as cost-free, or available.

There’s a lot of content out there to learn Power BI, and power related features of Excel for end-of-process reporting.

BI assumes that data already exists in a structured form that can be consumed by the BI tools. In reality that’s not the case. An awful lot of labour-intensive workflow needs to happen on spreadsheets in order to produce the data that goes into the BI reporting model.

Until now, there’s been hardly anything written about the process – without which there won’t be an end-of-process (except where data already exists in structured form). Including, nothing on how to make the processes more manageable.

How do we design this workflow? What are the important issues? What about Future-Proofing and Scalability? Maintenance/manageability? Principles of efficient workflow? Spreadsheet strategy?

How do we transform fragile workflows that already exist? (see the WSP Annual Budgeting Case Study)

Nothing out there!

To fill this gap, I’ve created the series ‘WTF to OMG!‘. The Dirty Dozen addresses the most horrific workflow blockages in common spreadsheet usage.

Hiran de Silva

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