See more. Decide better. Business Analytics with Power BI: From Accounting Data to Decisions
Business analytics often sounds like something that needs its own department and a large budget. In practice, for most Lithuanian companies it means something very specific: the data already in your accounting system should turn itself into reports that a manager can open at any time.
That is exactly what Power BI is for: Microsoft’s business analytics platform, which connects to your accounting software and turns its data into live reports.
What problem it solves
Almost every company has the data. What is missing is not data but answers:
- Reports are prepared by hand, so they appear whenever someone has the time.
- Every new breakdown means another export to Excel.
- Different people calculate the same metric in different ways.
- By the time a report is ready, it is already out of date.
Two days a month spent copying data adds up to almost a month of work a year. And that is not even the biggest cost: the bigger one is decisions made too late.
What a business analytics system does
Power BI does three jobs that accounting software does not:
- It brings data together. Sales, costs, debts and inventory end up in a single model, so they can be compared with one another.
- It calculates automatically. Margin, average invoice value and variance against budget are recalculated every time the data refreshes.
- It presents things clearly. A manager sees a metric rather than a table, and can drill down from it to an individual invoice.
The result is a report that is ready every morning without anyone lifting a finger, and that can be opened on a phone.
What you actually see on screen
The standard report package contains what managers ask about most often:
- Executive summary: the key metrics on one screen;
- revenue and costs, compared with the previous year and the budget;
- sales analysis with margin and average invoice value;
- customer analysis: who is buying, who has dropped away, who pays late;
- debts and late payments;
- stock levels and slow-moving stock;
- balance sheet and profit and loss statement.
You can see what this looks like in practice on the report examples page.
Where the data comes from
Usually straight from the accounting software. In Lithuania that is typically Rivilė or Finvalda; for restaurant chains, the R-Keeper point-of-sale system.
The connection is read-only: the analytics system does not change any data and writes nothing back to the accounts. Nothing needs to be changed in the accounting software itself.
Where needed, other sources can be connected to the same reports: a CRM, an HR system, production data or a simple Excel file with the budget. This is where reports emerge that no single system could produce on its own.
How long it takes
With a ready-built report package, a few days, because the reports are already built and only need to be adapted to your departments and product groups. A bespoke project takes weeks, depending on the number of data sources.
Little is needed from the company: access to the database and one person who can answer questions about how your accounts are set up. The process is described on the Power BI implementation page, and we look at timescales in more detail in a separate article.
When it pays for itself
Business analytics pays off sooner than most people expect, usually for three reasons: falling margins spotted in time, overdue debts seen earlier, and cash tied up in inventory.
If preparing reports currently takes several days a month, the solution pays for itself through the time saved alone. Whether it is worth it in your case is covered separately.
Where to start
The simplest route is a ready-built package for your accounting software: Rivilė Basic or PRO, Finvalda Basic or PRO. Prices start from €59 a month; see the comparison on the pricing page.
