Of KPI Trees and Scorecards: Using Goals in Power BI

Posted on by Gogula G. Aryalingam

I recently spoke about Goals in Power BI at the local Power BI meetup.

The feature is currently in preview, introduced some 8 months ago, and has quite a lot of promise. For me, it is particularly exciting since I am working with a large customer, who is a perfect candidate to implement goals for. So, what is Goals in Power BI?

Let us take a quick scenario first: Organizations, regularly (if not frequently) monitor indicators of their business performance to ensure their goals and aspirations are met. Sometimes these aspirations are difficult to keep track of due to various complexities. Consider a goal called Reduce employee turnover and increase satisfaction (something that I picked up from here). To effectively understand and track its progress, the organization would probably have a few key performance indicators (KPIs) that make it easy to look at reducing employee turnover and increasing satisfaction objectively. One such KPI could be a low human capital Turnover Rate while another could be a high Employee Satisfaction Indicator. Collectively these KPIs will help determine the achievement of the goal within a stipulated period (such as a calendar year). Similarly an organization will have many goals that are aligned to organizational KPIs or metrics. Sometimes, certain KPIs/metrics may cascade down the organization’s departments, where each department’s performance determine the overall organizational performance.

Goals (preview) in Power BI

Goals in Power BI breathes new life into the scorecards functionality that was familiar to many of us BI folk once upon a time (pre-Power BI times). In Power BI, goals are contained within a Power BI artefact called a scorecard. A goal, (at the time of writing), has:

  • A current value (that is either manual, or data-driven) of the metric
  • A target value (that is either manual, or data-driven) for the metric
  • A status (which can be manually updated, or rule-driven) to indicate how the goal is faring
  • A start and end date for the goal
  • Owner(s) of the goal to drive accountability
– New Goal –

Once set up with all organizational goals; the owners will need to regularly monitor the goal, and keep track of it. Power BI provides options for owners to regularly check-in on their goals, and update statuses. A rule-driven approach can also be used to keep goals up to date.

A Use Case

If you were wondering what an ideal use case is for Goals in Power BI, consider a KPI tree. Imagine a set of strategic goals that an organization aspires to achieve during the financial year. The goals are spread across multiple departments, while some goals may have sub-goals.

Now, once the goals, and sub-goals are all determined, you choose the KPIs/metrics that would drive the goals, along with the targets for these KPIs/metrics. Where would you choose these KPIs/metrics and their targets from? A dashboard that is used to monitor organizational and departmental KPIs; ideally an executive dashboard that is regularly used to run the business. Even more ideal is if the dashboard is powered by a certified dataset that is a result of a standard architecture and analytics process – essentially your core dataset(s). It is important to configure the KPI/metric that is measured by the goal by filtering it, for instance for the current year, or the department for which the goal applies to. Targets for the goals, too can come from a dashboard, or even be set to a manual value in its absence.

Given here is a sample scorecard with goals, just to envision how an organizational KPI tree may look like. You first set it up with all the goals, subgoals and such.

– Sample scorecard with goals –

You then link each of them to a KPI/metric from an appropriate dashboard. The required filters can be configured when selecting the KPI/metric at this time, so that it aligns with the context of the goal.

Envision and what’s next

Now, envision this; owners accountable for the goals regularly check-in on their goals. To see the status of each goal in the real world, they tap into dashboard directly from the goal. Based on what they see and analyze, they go back to the goal and update their check-in with a status.

– Go-to dashboard for more context or to analyze –

If the goal is tracked via rules, the status and trend will indicate if the going is good or not. If it does not look good, the owner goes into the dashboard, drills down to where the problem is, or perform some ad hoc analysis on the problem, and then updates their check-in.

– Checking in on a goal –

A couple of, what I would consider, must-have functionality in Goals for Power BI is the ability for subgoals to rollup to the main goal, and for a goal to to cascade down a hierarchy (such as departments). According to the current Power BI release wave, both these functionality should be available for preview next month. That would definitely require a follow up post.

Additional reading