257: PowerPoint & Power BI... Bridging the Gap

We have a great mailbag today! Mike, Seth, & Tommy discuss the following question:

I'm the chief cook and bottle washer in IT for Power BI in my subsidiary of my org. I've shown some business users how to integrate live Power BI pages into ppt and it's really sparked a lot of interest. And I think this could be a really fruitful topic for you three to discuss.

My angle is this. I think the corporation that I work for is probably pretty typical in that PowerPoint is THE format for all visual communication at a director-level and above. PBI's role in this up til now has been either screen shots into ppt or data dumps that individuals use to create their own visuals in Excel and then paste into ppt. And no one has wanted to give direct access to PBI apps to VPs, let alone our group president because it's "too hard. They just want it laid right out for them".

I think a big part of this is really that directors want to be between the data and the execs, so that they can interpret it for them. And maybe add some business logic that they're holding a little too close to the vest into the presentation. Kind of the intersection between data culture and tribal knowledge. (Some departments are worse about this than others.)

I think the live PBI integration into ppt can help break this down a little. First, it means that all the business logic needs to be directly in PBI, but at the same time, it allows commentary to be inserted in the usual ppt way of bullet points. To that end, I've created some custom reports on existing datasets that are stripped down (no header, no company logo as those are in the corporate ppt template) and have custom dimensions to fit the space in ppt better. I have them sized so that they take up about 2/3 of the slide with 1/3 on the right left for bullet points.

Also, since the embedded PBI pages are still interactive, I'm trying to sneakily introduce PBI functionality to the execs that see them and maybe they'll ask for access to the original reports/apps themselves.

I could go on, but what do you guys think? Do you like this approach? Do you have any other ideas?

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