Tunbridge Wells Dashboard in Power BI showing number of calls offered and abandoned for Council Tax and Benefits
,

Unleashing the Power of Power BI – Transforming Data into Insightful Visualisations

26 June 2024 - by Samuel Boomdijk

In today’s data-driven world, businesses need tools that can turn raw data into actionable insights. Microsoft Power BI is our powerful analytics service of choice for that job. This blog post takes a look at some core functionalities and how we at SDS have been working with Tunbridge Wells Borough council (TWBC) to utilise these.

Data Connectivity

Power BI allows its users to connect to various data sources, including Excel spreadsheets, cloud services, on-premises databases, and more. The flexibility ensures that all relevant data can be incorporated into your analysis. No matter where you have your data stored!  Moreover, at TWBC, they connect to their SQL server database which then allows for further manipulation.

Data Transformation

Using Power BI’s Power Query, we clean, transform, and manipulate data to fit our specific needs. This is a crucial step for preparing data for any meaningful analysis. Furthermore, we have found that investing more time in this step, allows for efficient maintenance of the report at the end stage.

Data Modeling

In addition, we have been supporting TWBC using Power BI to create sophisticated data models and define relationships between different data sets. Some examples of this include call monitoring data and customer demand. This then helps to design a structured and dynamic framework for the dashboard, really bringing the numbers to life.

Power BI Visualisation, Dashboards and Reports

One of Power BI’s standout features is its rich set of visualisation tools. We have used these to create interactive and customisable charts, graphs, and maps that make data easy to understand and explore. As a result, our dashboards and reports are comprehensive and provide a snapshot of business performance. Finally, we can share these with colleagues and stakeholders, fostering a data-driven culture.

Tunbridge Wells Dashboard in Power BI showing number of calls offered and abandoned for Council Tax and Benefits

Tunbridge Wells Dashboard in Power BI showing number of Enquiries per service area

Real-Time Analytics

Power BI enables real-time data monitoring at TWBC. Consequently, this allows services to stay updated with the latest information and make timely decisions. For example, we have been monitoring the impact on telephone enquiries, having made changes to the information given on Penalty Charge Notices.

Power BI & Digital Transformation

Evidently, TWBC is already seeing major benefits of using Power BI. They currently have a number of working dashboards set up across multiple services. Going forward, using Power BI to help make data driven decisions will be a crucial part of their digital transformation program.

If you would like to find out more about our work with Power BI at Tunbridge Wells Borough Council, please get in touch.