Power BI as a Planning Tool
insightsoftware recently purchased Power ON, a tool that sits on top of Power BI and allows you to do your planning via write-back all in the same platform. On August 30, insightsoftware’s Dylan Chapman sat down with the FP&A Guy Paul Barnhurst on LinkedIn Live to discuss how Power ON can help you use Power BI as an integrated planning tool.
Quick Speaker Background
After more than 12 years in financial planning and analysis, Paul Barnhurst created The FP&A Guy website to be a resource for financial planning and analysis professionals. From consulting services to skill-building courses to the FP&A Today podcast, financial planning and analysis professionals can turn to Barnhurst for a variety of learning tools and resources to enhance your career success.
As a global leader in financial software solutions, insightsoftware acquired Power ON to enhance Power BI and provide users with a better financial planning option. Dylan Chapman came to insightsoftware from Power ON and has been working in and around Power BI solutions for over six years. Power ON supercharges Power BI with planning and write-back capabilities, giving users the power of real-time collaborative data collection, forecasting, commenting, and what-if scenario modeling right in Power BI.
How Power ON Turns Power BI into a Planning Tool
Paul kicked off the conversation by asking Dylan some of the main reasons that you may want to incorporate planning into a reporting tool like Power BI versus having a BI stack and a separate planning tool, as most organizations do. What is the benefit of integrating the two?
As Dylan noted in his response, integrating planning into Power BI just makes your life easier. If you’re reporting on your actuals, you’ll want to see the comparison to what you’re currently working on – which means you’ll be working with multiple different tools to accomplish that goal.
Constantly moving back and forth between different tools is not just aggravating and tedious, but it also leaves you at risk of data errors. Power ON allows you to do everything in one central location, simplifying and streamlining your planning processes.
As the discussion continued, Dylan noted that planning tool implementations can carry a lot of risk, such as how well customizations and configurations work, and whether your users can become self-sufficient with the new tool. Even if the implementation goes well, people will naturally resist change. It’s not easy to pick up what you’re doing today and move to a new system.
But adding Power ON to your Power BI allows you to add capabilities without the pain of changing ecosystems. Its Excel-like interface allows you to build on your existing skillset to deliver outstanding results in an already-familiar environment. With Power ON, you get the impact of change without the headaches.
Power BI as a Planning Tool
Download NowMoving along, Paul asked Dylan how it felt to come to insightsoftware through the acquisition of Power ON. What impact did the merger have on Power ON and its users? Dylan noted that the acquisition has been extremely affirming to Power ON; it was a testament to the value and potential that adding write-back to Power BI brings.
Moving forwards, current and future customers can expect increased enablement support and product development, as well as access to a variety of other insightsoftware tools that wouldn’t have otherwise been available to them.
Transform Power BI into a Complete Planning, Forecasting, and Collaboration Solution
As Paul and Dylan continued, write-back capabilities took center stage. Paul predicted in January 2023 that financial planning professionals could look forward to seeing an increase in BI write-back tools that allow you to see your data in one single source of truth, and Power ON certainly delivers.
With Power ON’s write-back capabilities, you no longer have to drudge through multiple steps of analysis in Power BI, then export to Excel to do what-if analysis, commentary, etc. You can analyze data, and immediately enter, edit, copy/paste, filter, slice, and even format directly in Power BI. Power ON boasts best-in-class features that allow you to work in Power BI like you do in Excel. You get the flexibility of an Excel spreadsheet and the full might of Power BI.
Turn Power BI into a planning and analysis powerhouse with Power ON.
- Analyze and Model – Take analysis to the next level. No more export to spreadsheet required! Analysis and what-if scenario planning are unified in one place within Power BI.
- Build and Plan – Assemble your data for planning, generate scenarios, and enable write-back. Add Drivers, KPIs, and approval workflow to further streamline your most critical data collection processes.
- Share and Collaborate – Connect decision makers across the business to analyze and plan in Power BI using the Excel features they know. Leverage existing security and multi-user models to jump right in with confidence.
- Decide and Act – Take action inside Power BI, right where you analyze, model, plan, and collaborate. You’ll bring decisions and actions to life faster that maximize impact and drive real results.
As the conversation turned to practical questions on Power ON’s functionality, Dylan demonstrated how you can use the software for write-back, scenario planning, rolling forecasts, sensitivity analysis, and more within Power BI. Paul and Dylan wrapped their discussion by highlighting how Power ON allows Power BI users to avoid the pitfalls of planning with disconnected tools and data sources, such as siloed and inaccurate data, a lack of transparency and accountability, and long planning cycles.
Download our informative brochure to learn more about how Power ON allows you to connect your data sources, create dynamic models, and collaborate in real-time within Power BI.
Supercharge Power BI with Planning and Writeback
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