Mark is Director of Business Intelligence at Industrial Finishes and Systems, a nation-wide wholesale distributor. He is also an Adjunct Professor at Washington State University teaching foundations of Power BI and DAX.
Mark started Story BI in 2020 to give back to the Power BI community.
The name Story BI reflects Mark’s passion for using data to tell meaningful stories. Through years of developing and sharing Power BI reports, he witnessed firsthand how a well-crafted report can help people connect the dots, solve problems, and take decisive action.
10+ plus years providing insights using Power Pivot and Power BI:
Interactive financial statement reporting,
Financial Planning and Analysis,
Whole basket analysis,
Customer Segmentation,
Cost to serve,
Flexible commission reporting,
Co-lead company-wide 4DX program,
Consult with customers providing added value analysis,
Revenue and cost recovery.
Developing a healthy data culture that improves how people access, explore, and share insights.
Learning data engineering in Microsoft Fabric with a focus on PySpark notebooks and data pipelines.
Thanks for visiting! Please connect with Mark on LinkedIn here.
I’ve prepared numerous spreadsheet reports over my career; many not fully utilized, and many generating more questions than answers.
I’ve also worked with ERP systems that work well as a database, but lack the flexible interface to provide trends and visual insights.
Microsoft Power BI provides report automation and empowers the citizen developer to share customize insights clearly, at scale, for report users on-demand.
Power BI is a cost-effective way for businesses of all sizes to turn data into direction by removing complexity, engaging others, and acting towards positive change.
Whether you are looking to automate a monthly spreadsheet process, wanting to track daily KPIs on the big screen, or supplementing your ERP with drill-down insights, there’s an opportunity to make your data work for you and tell a better data story.
Below are examples of sample reports and features to help share your data story.
Income Statement Reader
The classic income statement is one of the most trusted documents in business. By publishing the income statement online, we track the business daily, identify changes, and drill into transaction detail all from one page.
Open the report by clicking on the image below. Then follow the bulleted steps below.
- Scroll down the main statement to the ‘Repairs and Maintenance’ line. You’ll notice an increase in expense over prior year highlighted in red.
- Click on the label ‘Repairs and Maintenance’ to highlight just this line. Notice the panel on the right filters to a list of repair amounts by month.
- Click on the + symbol on October to reveal the issue. We have a capital project entry mixed in with our repairs and maintenance.
With the ability to review the statement and dig into details if needed, we understand the issue well enough to simply ask for a correction.
For those looking for a clean flexible sales report, Power BI gives the developer many options to provide a high-level reporting experience with the option to explore at a more granular level. This report sample allows the user to explore sales through any combinations of grouping including customer by state, vendor, part purchase. The graphs also give us the ability to switch between values that measure sales performance over time.
Retail Analysis
The report below features both a matrix table and chart visuals. The multiple line chart on the right of the screen calls out high and low points between different product groups. Accessories sold the most overall, and Shoes sold the least overall. Within each graph we also call out both high and low points in each individual product group.
Thank you for visiting Story BI, please don’t hesitate to contact us on how we can add value to your data story.
Mark Walter, CPA – Story BI – mark@storybi.com