Business Intelligence Best Practices | Reading Time: 4 minutes 

Imagine having all your business data in front of you, fully organized into charts and dashboards. What’s the first thing you’d want to know? 

It seems like a simple question—but it reveals one of the biggest challenges for small and medium-sized businesses when starting with Power BI: not knowing where to begin or what to analyze. 

You often hear: 

“I want a complete dashboard.” 
“I need to see everything about my company in one place.” 
“I want every KPI possible.” 

But when everything is a priority, nothing truly is. 

The real power of BI doesn’t come from tracking everything. It comes from knowing what matters most—and that starts with a question: 
What decisions do I need to make with more confidence today? 

Don’t start by building dashboards. Start by asking the right questions. 

Before opening Power BI and creating graphs, take a step back and ask: 

• What’s keeping me up at night in the business? 

• Where am I guessing instead of knowing? 

• What areas feel out of control or uncertain? 

• What part of the business impacts my profit the most right now? 

These questions help separate curiosity from decision-critical insights. Because a good dashboard isn’t just pretty—it’s useful. 

Stop thinking about data. Start thinking about decisions. 

To discover what your business should be analyzing, change your mindset from “What data do I have?” to: 
“What decisions do I need to make better?” 

Here are a few examples: 

Decision You Need to Make	What You Should Analyze
“Should I hire another salesperson?”	Conversion rates by rep, revenue per hour, CAC by channel
“Where should I invest more in marketing?”	Product margin, campaign ROI, sales by channel
“Where am I losing money?”	Revenue vs. expenses by area, churn, rework
“Why is my team overwhelmed?”	Volume per staff, average task duration, SLA metrics

In other words, you don’t need to think like an analyst. You need to think like a decision-maker. The data is simply a reflection of your priorities. 

Look beyond the numbers: patterns tell the story 

Raw numbers don’t always reveal much. But when you look at patterns, you start to unlock real insight. 

• Do your top customers get follow-up faster? 

• Are acquisition costs rising while conversions are falling? 

• Do some products sell better through specific channels? 

• Are complaints linked to long response times? 

These types of connections only emerge when you organize your data around real questions, not generic charts. 

A practical framework to discover what you should analyze 

Use this 4-step method to define the right indicators for your business: 

1. State a current challenge 
   Example: “Sales have dropped over the past three months.” 

2. List possible reasons 
   Example: Seasonality, competition, team motivation, customer loss. 

3. Turn these into analysis questions 
   Example: 

• Did sales drop across all products or just some? 

• Was the dip across all channels or just online? 

• Did repeat purchases decline? 

• Has our team’s average response time increased? 

4. Translate those questions into metrics 
   Example: 

• Sales by product line; 

• Channel-based conversion rates; 

• Monthly repeat customer rate; 

• Avg. response time per team member. 

Now you know exactly what to analyze—and why. 

The best analysis is the one that answers your reality 

There’s no such thing as a one-size-fits-all dashboard. What works for a clothing retailer doesn’t work for a dental clinic. The secret isn’t copying someone else’s report—it’s understanding your business at a deeper level. 

Power BI lets you build dashboards around your needs—but it only brings value when it’s aligned with real business decisions. 

If you’re just starting out, keep it simple: One dashboard. One challenge. Real value. That alone can change your operations. 

Final Thoughts 

The biggest mistake you can make when starting with Power BI is jumping straight to the visuals—without knowing what they’re supposed to answer. 

Before you build dashboards, reflect. 
Before you visualize, ask questions. 
Before you measure, decide what really matters. 

Because those who know what they need to decide, know what they need to analyze—and those who analyze well, don’t rely on luck. They grow with clarity. 

Next article: How to Start a BI Project With Power BI—Simple, Fast, and Without Complexity