17 Crucial Minutes
The objective of this blog
We’ve learned that 17 minutes a month is all it takes to ensure alignment between our development team and your goals for BI.
Lets break that down…
1 Power BI Adoption meeting (15 minutes) + A glance at our weekly Smartsheet report (30 seconds x 4) = A total of 17 minutes per month
Effective communication is a fundamental element to success in the world of business intelligence. We are passionate about not only making sure we speak the language of our partner’s businesses, but also minimizing our interactions quantity whilst maximizing their quality. From the moment we begin working with a new team, it is our top priority to maintain a strong level of communication with every member, from executive leadership to entry-level BI champion.
To do this, we employ what we have found to be a proven methods for successful communication.
There are 2 key areas of communication:
1. Face-Time
Usually on a monthly basis, adoption meetings are a meant to focus on the ‘big picture’ view of partner engagements. Although we may be asking questions during these conversations such as ‘do our timelines match?’ and ‘are we on track with our goals?’, the most important things we can ask are:
1) Are partners happy with our Professional Service to them ?
2) Are activities still aligned with the current single purpose of the solution we are building with the said Partner ?
2. Dashboards & Reports
Every dashboard that our consultants make speak a different business language. At FreshBI we have a custom dashboard that we regularly share with our partners. This dashboard illustrates the ways in which our dedicated team of professionals care about enduring that your business finds solutions to challenges and meets its goals, while maintaining the utmost efficient and clear communication possible.
This dashboard,
a) A high-level overview of ongoing sprints and tasks
b) Existing roadblocks
c) Future goals, and
d) A visual of timeline
e) Estimated Return on Investment and report adoption percentages (therefore, value) in various areas of business.
When our partners and developers take a mere 30 seconds a week to view this report, it saves hours of time caused by a myriad of issues (for example, creating a report that doesn’t serve the company’s needs or executive leadership’s expectations). Naturally, the more time we can save the better the return on investment.
Adoption Explained
When the right questions aren’t asked, effective communication fails. A similar failure happens when we focus on quantity of face-time and partner interactions, rather than quality. Translated into BI, even if on a technical level there is success, improper knowledge transfer can devastate any project.
Let’s say a consultant works together with a partner’s BI champion and creates a dashboard for the finance team. The BI champion and consultant design this dashboard to be what they think this team might like to see, and then it goes out to end users. Let’s say that on a granular level, there is value in the solution created, but the finance team doesn’t use the tool. How could this have been avoided? By asking “what would be a valuable tool for these end users”, and importantly, gathering feedback. In situations like these, taking a step back and focusing on where value lies is critical
We want to emphasize the importance of attendance to Adoption meetings, and taking half a minute to look at our weekly reports for this very reason.
17 Crucial Minutes
A seemingly small amount of time, 17 minutes a month or 3.4 hours a year, can determine the success of a BI solution, leading to thousands of dollars saved. Prioritizing quality communication in a minimalist fashion has proven its success with all of our partners.
We have learned through years of experience the diversity of what dashboards mean for both our partners, and in some cases their own customers. This has saved our parters hours of valuable time, as striving to get things right through concise and consistent communication has been our goal since day one.
Let’s Chat
At FreshBI, we’ve lowered the barriers, risk and cost of developing world-class Power BI dashboards so that you can unlock the value in your data.
Contact us through the scheduling app to start a conversation about how our data visualization consultants can design your best Power BI dashboards today.
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About FreshBI
Based in Canada, South Africa and in the United Kingdom, we have helped hundreds of businesses achieve excellence & success through business intelligence.
Power BI runs in our blood, and we are ready to take your business to next level.