Transforming an existing dashboard into a dynamic PowerBi solution

Project description

The objective of this project is to transform existing Excel sheets into meaningful insights, enabling data-driven decision-making within the organization. By structuring and visualizing financial and operational data effectively, the project aims to enhance clarity, accessibility, and strategic planning.

Additionally, Fontys is aiming to limit reliance on a single person, who has in-depth knowledge of the current Excel structure and its complexities. By converting the dashboards to PowerBI, it will make the environment more accessible to other employees and eliminate the single point of failure. This is a danger for business continuity.

Context

Fontys University of Applied Sciences, one of the largest applied sciences universities in the Netherlands, serves over 44,000 students and 5,000 employees across multiple campuses. Its Planning and Control (P&C) department supports financial planning, budgeting, monitoring, risk management, and reporting across all locations, ensuring resources align with strategic goals.

Currently, P&C relies on Excel-based reports for budgeting, expense tracking, forecasting, and risk assessments. However, these reports are time-consuming to manage due to manual data entry, which increases the risk of human error and data inconsistencies. The complexity of the reports also limits their usability for decision-makers. Additionally, Excel's lack of version control and collaborative features makes it difficult to track changes and maintain data integrity.

A major risk is the department’s dependence on a single employee who fully understands the existing system, posing a threat to business continuity. Moreover, Excel offers limited access control, raising concerns about unauthorized access, data breaches, and compromised financial data.

Transitioning to Power BI would address these challenges by enabling centralized, secure access management, real-time insights, and easier interpretation through intuitive visualizations. It would also reduce reliance on one individual and empower other team members to contribute effectively, enhancing both efficiency and security.

Results

The project includes:

• Research on data sources, best practises, programming languages and tools.
• Data Cleansing and Transformation.
• Create a PowerBI dashboard that is based on the existing Excel dashboard that allows users to filter and display data from different Fontys domains.
• Improve upon the created PowerBI dashboard to include a better layout, more filters and possible other visuals for better data readability.
• Documentation explaining the process and decisions we made regarding the dashboard.
• Create a user manual for employees without experience in PowerBI to help navigate the dashboard.