- [Manu] Hello, and welcome to this video series
on the Power BI Adoption Framework,
which is about empowering every decision maker.
I'm Manu.
- [Paul] And I'm Paul.
- [Manu] And in this video, we'll talk about
how you can plan for a successful rollout of Power BI.
The easier and compelling you make the case for change,
the stronger are your chances of success
with people adopting the change.
You can plan for adoption by identifying
different training needs based on use cases
and establish training programs
to minimize fear and resistance of new technologies.
A change management program
can help you bring the change in people and processes,
which will eventually bring the change in your organization.
Identifying low-hanging fruits in terms of project delivery
can help you roll out Power BI to a large number of people
with very little effort.
A proper rollout strategy allows for a smooth rollout,
which is very likely to increase user adoption.
It enables IT and business users in various roles,
before they are assigned new responsibilities,
and it provides timely support
and leverages communities and online resources
to make the most effective use of time and budget.
The key questions that our customers ask
in context of rollout and deployment are:
Should we roll out Power BI in phases,
or should we just switch it on
for everyone in the organization in one go?
What should be the process for assigning licenses
and installing Power BI Desktop?
Do we need to provide some guidance
before people can start using the tool in anger?
Are there certain categories of projects
that are easier to implement and roll out?
How do we manage the change?
How can we do some internal marketing
when we launch new projects?
What's the best way to inform employees about the rollout?
And most importantly, what are the different training needs
for people in various roles?
There are no right or wrong answers,
but we'll share our thoughts on each of these questions
based on our experience of working with customers
and helping them address these questions.
Many large organizations prefer to have a phased rollout,
which means that they start with a small number of teams
and users who are most likely to benefit from Power BI,
and then slowly expand the reach.
In this scenario,
senior management and IT
get involved in evaluating products
to identify the most suitable product
for self-service BI delivery
and then define governance and security standards
for the whole organization.
They also set up the Power BI service
and on-premises infrastructure
like gateways, if it's required,
and develop a support structure,
which may include contracts with third parties
to support Power BI in their organization.
IT teams also typically deliver some corporate BI solutions
that can be consumed by various business teams,
and many organizations also launch training programs
for the initial upskilling of the staff.
Once the organizational structures are in place,
business teams build on that foundation
and start using the tool with support from IT.
Power BI champions within the business
are typically identified during the trainings
that are run by corp.,
and then these champions help roll out Power BI
within their teams or departments.
This is a two-stage approach,
and while this is very structured
and allows the organization to prepare itself
for self-service BI,
the drawback of this approach is that
it can delay the benefits that business teams
can get from Power BI due to the initial setup period.
This is why many organizations prefer
to roll out Power BI to the entire organization in one go.
This is relatively easy for smaller organizations,
but we've also seen some large organizations do this.
Microsoft is one of the examples,
and I believe that the rollout of Power BI within Microsoft
has been really successful.
This approach works best for organizations
that already have strong data governance
and security standards that can be leveraged
for the rollout of Power BI.
Strategic decisions like the choice of product,
governance and security standards,
are still taken by corp.,
and the service is also managed centrally.
But beyond that, the involvement of corp.
and the IT teams can vary.
For example, they may provision the on-premises components
and develop a support structure
or leave it to the business teams
to implement these in context of their projects.
IT teams may deliver some corporate BI solutions
for enterprise-wide consumption,
or they may leave the business teams to develop
and consume BI solutions themselves.
The key advantage of this scenario
is that the business can gain benefits
of using Power BI very quickly.
Once the tool is available to everyone,
Power BI champions emerge from within the business,
and business teams are typically responsible
for infrastructure, support, and training.
We worked with many organizations
where business teams have started using
Power BI on their own.
And what we normally see in that scenario
is that the corp. and IT teams tend to get involved later.
And that typically delays things
at a later stage in the project,
where it may impact project milestones.
So getting corp. and IT involved at an earlier stage
can be very beneficial.
Anyone who has Power BI Desktop installed on their machine
can author reports and publish them to the service.
And given that they will be working
with organizational data,
we highly recommend that they are provided
with some guidance on data governance and security.
Another aspect of rolling out Power BI Desktop
is that the support team will need enough capacity
to respond to queries from the user base.
So, this capacity should be taken into consideration
when rolling out Power BI Desktop.
The desktop tool is updated monthly,
and some organizations prefer to test the updates
before releasing the new version to their employees
via SCCM or Windows Store for Business.
This is something that you should also evaluate.
A phased rollout might work well if you will have
a relatively smaller number of authors initially
and need to increase support capacity
before a large number of users start authoring reports.
The rollout of the desktop tool
can also be aligned to a power user training,
which can cover the key governance and security concepts
so that everyone who authors reports
understands organizational best practices.
The organization's readiness to audit user actions,
which is available in the Power BI service
and security implementation may also impact
the approach towards the rollout of the desktop tool.
- [Paul] Identifying projects and reporting scenarios
that are of low complexity
but have high value to the business
can enable quicker development of solutions
while reaching a large number of users.
In turn, this leads to a greater business impact
while causing minimal disruption to existing processes.
Focusing on such projects at the initial stages
can help you establish usage scenarios for Power BI.
Let's talk about a few project types
that can provide these benefits.
If your organization has already invested
in developing SQL Server Analysis Services
multidimensional or tabular models,
then you can point to those sources via Power BI Desktop
and develop reports and dashboards.
This can provide a new modern way to explore data models
that have been developed over the years.
If you don't have Analysis Services
but have a data warehouse with a star or snowflake schema,
then that could be a great starting point,
as you can simply import that data into Power BI
or explore that data via DirectQuery,
depending on the size and the complexity of the data.
If the data is not stored in a structured schema
but is available in a database,
or maybe in a file with high-level aggregates
coming from various sources,
then it could be very easy to import that data into Power BI
and create a data model.
While working with customers,
we find a lot of business-critical applications
are still based on Excel and Access.
While Excel and Access are great tools
when used for the intended purpose,
scaling such solutions can be a challenge.
And this is where Power BI comes in.
It has a lot of similarities with Excel and Access
but has an enterprise-grade data modeling engine,
which allows it to scale
for the Power BI service very easily.
If you're working on a BI project
which is at the prototyping stage,
then we strongly recommend using Power BI
because it can help you to rapidly iterate
various versions of the prototype
to help define requirements clearly.
For this stage, we recommend discussing and planning
for the first projects using Power BI.
These should have additional focus and support
to ensure their success as well as confirm
that the governance plan is also working.
One of the key principles of change management
is that it is a person who changes, not an organization.
So it's really important to implement a change
with the support of people
so that the change is sustainable.
People are currently following a process
and need to understand how the new process
and the new tool will make their lives easier.
Any efforts made to make the transition smooth
will provide great benefits
because a difficult transition
could potentially force people to go back
to their old ways of working.
We worked with a team of change management consultants
on some of our engagements
and found that really useful
because the specialists in that area
know exactly what needs to be done
to inspire people to change.
If you cannot engage change management experts,
then it may be worth reviewing
a change management platform like Prosci,
which can provide you a structured approach
and help drive the change
in a predictable and repeatable way.
One of the simple ways of making the change easier
is just simply working with the users
on defining the process of transition
while bearing their workloads in mind.
Providing clarity on the timelines and information
on what needs to be done at the switchover point
will also make the transition smooth.
While working with a large organization
on a business intelligence program,
we realized that internal marketing of new projects
can be quite critical to the success of the project.
And one of the ways in which internal marketing can be done
is by creating project launch videos.
These videos can be a great starting point
for people to understand the capabilities
of the new project and the new tool.
Videos can be made available on demand,
so they can be accessed anytime, anywhere.
And in my opinion,
a lot of people prefer watching videos
to reading long documents.
In terms of what you can include in the video,
an introduction to the project
and the challenge it is addressing is quite key.
The video should highlight key capabilities,
especially what's possible now with the new tool
that wasn't possible before.
Going through some key usage scenarios
for various profiles of users
and interviews with end users involved in the project pilots
can be very useful.
The videos should ideally end with an overview
of the next step and some go-dos for the users.
Sending out communications at the time of rollout
can help avoid confusion and uncertainty
on how to use the tool,
how to get a Pro license, et cetera,
which typically cause disruption
and consume time and effort.
You can also use the communication as a channel
to signpost people to key contacts and resources.
The most effective communications
include a sense of purpose in them.
For example, a message from the senior leadership
stating that the purpose of rolling out Power BI
is to drive a data-driven culture in the organization
could be very influential.
Providing information on how individuals
can get a Power BI Pro license
can help eliminate confusion and uncertainty.
An overview of the governance strategy
and how it is aligned with the organization's culture
can help people understand the need for governance.
In terms of signposting,
you can list key contacts
like the Power BI admin
or the licensing contacts,
and provide links to videos and documents
that can help people get started.
A lot of employees will have new roles and responsibilities
in a self-service BI environment,
so equipping people with the right skills
before they assume new responsibilities
will help minimize teething problems,
as well as the fear and resistance of a new tool.
Power BI can be used to develop self-service BI solutions
and enterprise-grade BI solutions,
so there's a wide range of skills
that people may need to perform their role appropriately.
Assessing needs for each role
can help you establish training programs for those roles,
which can then be delivered by in-person training
or online courses.
In many cases, you may be able to leverage courses
and content that Microsoft and our partner firms
have made available online.
In order for the training program to be effective,
it should be revised frequently.
It's normally a good practice
to initially run the training for a subset of power users
to get feedback from the attendees
and revise the content before releasing
it to a wider audience.
We've included a link to the slides
used in this presentation in the description below.
Thanks for listening,
and if you have any feedback or questions,
please leave a comment.
See you in the next one.