Achieving Goals with Microsoft Power BI

Goals are an important part of business; they provide focus, direction, and motivation. Good goals can inspire us to perform better than our best – what Jim Collins calls Big Hairy Audacious Goals (BHAGs). But there is a difference between setting a goal and achieving it. Otherwise we would all be slim and complaining about the worldwide shortage of yachts.

Microsoft Power BI can help you achieve the goals you set. How? Research by Deloitte  suggests there are three principles you should follow with goals:

1. Goal clarity
2. Ongoing review
3. Making goals matter

Goal clarity

Goal clarity comes from defining how the goal will be measured.

By setting a goal and defining the measurement criteria at the same time, including which system the data will come from, you remove any discussion about what the goal means.

What often happens is that we set a seemingly simple goal, let’s say sales per month, without defining the data that will be used because it seems obvious. A sale is a sale, isn’t it? Three months into the year, and discussions start. Is it:

1. When the Sales department get agreement from the customer to proceed?
2. When the contract has been signed?
3. When the deposit has been paid?
4. When some of the work has been invoiced?
5. When all of the work has been invoiced?
6. When all of the work has been paid for?
7. Including commission/charges/carriage? 

Unless the measurement of the goal is clearly defined, debates and discussion will follow. Or worse, some people will work to one set of rules, and others will work to another set of rules.

Ongoing review

The Deloitte research also found:

“Organizations that have employees revise or review their goals quarterly or more frequently were three-and-a-half times more likely to score in the top 25 percent of business outcomes.”

With clear measurement criteria in place, Power BI makes it possible to review as frequently as required. Power BI has a range of options to review progress to targets, from tables to cards, gauges to KPI indicators.

What’s important is that once the report is linked to the data it can be regularly refreshed, so everyone is working on current information.

Make goals matter

Power BI helps you clarify your goals, and review progress. It also helps with setting goals that matter to everyone, by allowing employees to set and monitor they own goals.

Goal setting power is in everyone’s capability with Power BI due to the range of data sources it works with, including Excel and Access databases. In addition, it gives everyone the ability to create powerful visuals that compare actuals to targets.

As most of us have repeatedly found, it’s not setting the goal that’s difficult, it’s tracking progress and keeping it visible that’s hard.

Power BI is a game changer when it comes to goals, targets, key performance indicators (KPIS). Far from “just” being able to visualize progress, it helps us clarify how we will measure our goals and track our progress towards them. And it gives us the ability to share that progress with others.
And for the first time, this isn’t something that happens within IT – everyone has the ability to create their own hard-hitting reports that show progress towards important goals.

If you’d like to find out more about using Power BI to track your goals, get in touch to find out more.

Bersin by Deloitte - Effective Employee Goal Management is Linked to Strong Business Outcomes