Power BI Consulting · Financial Industry
A fast-growing mid-size financial organization was flying blind — disparate data, manual reconciliation, and no real-time visibility into whether they'd hit their annual revenue goal. We changed that in weeks, not months.
Most BI consultants start with your data and hope it connects to a goal. Our power bi consulting financial industry engagements always begin differently- We do the opposite. Every engagement begins at the top of the Gartner Value Pyramid — with the business outcome leadership actually cares about — and works down to the data that needs to support it. Here's exactly how we applied that to this engagement.
Before opening Power BI, we sat with the CFO and COO to identify the single mission-critical priority: Optimize Revenue Streams — exceed the annual budget forecast by fiscal year end. Working top-down through the Gartner Value Pyramid, we mapped every layer from goal to data.
Most dashboards fail because they're designed for one generic "user." We separately interviewed C-suite executives and Director-level managers — because their information needs, usage scenarios, and resulting actions are completely different. This table drove every design decision.
| Persona | KPI | Data Used To | Action It Drives |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-Suite (CFO/COO) | Current Actual vs Budget | Assess real-time revenue performance against forecast targets | Quick adjustments to sales strategies to meet forecasted revenue |
| YTD Actual vs Budget Comparison | Evaluate how year-to-date revenue aligns with yearly goals | Strategic planning for the remaining fiscal period | |
| Actual vs Forecast by Line Item | Analyze specific revenue lines against forecast | Focus product/service lines to improve or capitalize on | |
| Directors | YTD Budget vs Actual by Person | Review individual contribution to annual revenue goals | Personnel development and possible territory adjustments |
| Current Actual vs Budget by Department | Monitor departmental performance relative to forecasts | Departmental strategy revision and resource reallocation |
Before touching Power BI, we storyboard the dashboard narrative. Each layer answers a specific management question — moving the CFO naturally from "where are we?" to "what do we do about it?" The mockup below is the actual storyboard we presented before any data work began.
One of the most common BI project failure modes: building the wrong thing and only discovering it at launch. Our POC-first approach means the client reviewed and approved a functional prototype before any production build began. What you see on the right is what got built — because the wireframe on the left was validated first.
Financial data lived in three separate systems — Personify for member management, MS Dynamics GP for transactional finance, and Excel for budget tracking. Nobody fully trusted any single number. Month-end close was a multi-day manual exercise of export, reconcile, and re-export.
Strategic decisions were being made on data that was already 30 days old. The COO had no way to see whether individual contributors or departments were on track to hit their annual targets until it was too late to course-correct.
After our engagement: the CFO opens a dashboard every Monday morning that shows real-time budget achievement, variance by entity, and top contributors — all with drill-through capability and dynamic filters. The close process no longer requires the manual reconciliation step for executive reporting.
This case study illustrates why our methodology produces different results. We never start with the data. We start with the decision the business needs to make faster, then build backward through KPIs to data assets.
The Gartner Value Pyramid, combined with our persona-driven usage scenario mapping and 4-layer dashboard storyboard, ensures that every dashboard we build is designed to drive a specific action — not just display information. This is what separates our power bi consulting financial industry approach from generic dashboard work.
Book a free 30-minute Power BI Precision Audit™. Book a free 30-minute Power BI Precision Audit™ — our standard starting point for every power bi consulting financial industry engagement. We'll map your current reporting environment, identify your highest-ROI opportunities, and show you exactly what a decision-first approach would change for your leadership team.