Short consultancy, getting the internal Power BI project moving

In my work helping organizations leverage Power BI, I sometimes observe a significant point of failure: the critical juncture between developing a functional report and successfully deploying it for enterprise-wide consumption. Our recent short-term advisory engagement with a multi-site hospitality client offers a valuable case study on how targeted expertise can bridge this gap.

The analyst team at this client was already performing excellent work, demonstrating numerical skills and a good understanding of foundational Power BI concepts. Their initial motivation was clear: to modernize reports that were consuming excessive time through manual, duplicated Excel spreadsheets. The operational necessity was equally urgent, as without consolidated insight, management need to know what was going on across their centres and to make informed decisions. The risk was not merely inefficiency, but the potential for a faulty solution that could yield the "wrong results," leading to poor strategic and tactical choices.

Our role was to provide a focused, high-impact consulting injection—typically between five to ten hours—to ensure their project shifted from a high-effort prototype to a governable, scalable asset. For a cost under £1,000 this process underscored two primary areas where internal teams can require expert intervention:

1. Mastering the Foundational Logic: The 'Why' of Data Modelling

Many self-starting teams are familiar with technical terminology, such as star schema. However, technical familiarity often falls short of practical implementation. My most valuable contribution was perhaps explaining the "why behind the data modelling".

When an analyst truly understands the rationale and consequences of their data structure—not just the steps to build it—it becomes significantly easier to implement the architecture correctly. This shift in understanding dramatically improves the report's long-term maintainability and performance. Crucially, the outcome was not just cleaner data; the biggest difference observed was a marked increase in our main contact's confidence to move forward.

2. Navigating the Administrative Chasm of Deployment

A powerful Power BI report confined to a desktop is not a business solution. We found the client was struggling with the "administrative side" of the Power BI Service, which they had to fit around their senior day job. This involves the governance required to take a finished report and correctly get that report out and share it with others with the correct security.

This stage—deployment, access, and data refresh setup—is where internal projects can stall. By providing clear, expert guidance on these crucial steps, we successfully transformed their project from what was "not quite a personal Power BI project" into "basically usable reports that can be shared around the organisation".

The Efficacy of Human Expertise Over Generic Tools

A final, compelling observation from this engagement concerned the limitations of automated assistance. The client explicitly noted that compared to general AI language models, my approach was "much more able to like pinpoint what they were actually after and deliver a solution much more effectively". This highlights the sustained value of human, targeted expertise: the ability to diagnose contextually and solve complex, interconnected errors efficiently, saving the client a "huge investment in their time". AI is great we use it a lot, but depth of human knowledge still has its place.

Conclusion

If your internal team has invested significant effort into Power BI development but lacks the final assurance, speed, and confidence to deploy, a brief, targeted consultation is potentially a cost-effective path to success. Our approach here is not about taking over the project, but providing the definitive, expert intervention necessary to move from a technical draft to an organisational asset.

While much of my work is on bigger projects we undertake for clients I have enjoyed providing this coaching and advice service.

As the client described the outcome, the value we delivered was defined by helpful, expertise, and responsive guidance. We exist to empower your team and ensure your investment in Power BI achieves its full potential.