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Case study · Reporting
From Excel to real-time ecommerce reporting
Self-service reporting on Power BI
Sector
Retail
Size
Multi-channel UK retailer
Duration
Several months, phased
Service
The situation
Trading decisions at a growing retailer depended on manual Excel reports, rebuilt every week from platform exports, marketing dashboards and finance data. By the time the numbers were ready they were already out of date, and different teams often arrived at meetings with different figures.
The business wanted to trade faster and give teams their own access to the numbers, without creating yet another set of reports nobody trusted.
The decision that mattered
The options were to automate the existing spreadsheets, to buy an off-the-shelf dashboard tool, or to build a proper reporting layer on Power BI. Automating the spreadsheets would have been quickest but would have locked in the existing confusion over definitions.
The business chose Power BI, starting with the decisions each team needed to make and agreeing one definition for each key number before building anything.
The DEQIO Method in action
Each dashboard started from a decision, not a data source: what does this team decide each week, and which numbers change that decision?
What we did
■ Mapped the weekly and monthly decisions each team needed to make.
■ Agreed single definitions for the KPIs that drive those decisions.
■ Replaced manual Excel reporting with self-service Power BI dashboards, phased by team.
■ Trained teams to use and trust the dashboards, then retired the old spreadsheets.
The outcome
Real-time
trading view
Self-service
for every team
1
agreed set of KPI definitions
Teams moved from waiting for weekly spreadsheets to real-time, self-service reporting, and meetings started from one agreed set of numbers. Time once spent compiling reports went into acting on them.
What it means for you
If your trading meeting starts with a debate about whose numbers are right, the fix is agreeing the definitions first. The tool comes second.
Key lesson
“Agree what the numbers mean before you automate them.”