Business Intelligence Buyer's Guide

Power BI Dashboard Example Template: The Retail Superstore

Power BI Dashboard Example Template

Power BI Dashboard Example Template

A Power BI dashboard example template using a retail superstore as a guide, created by the editors at Solutions Review.

Microsoft Power BI is one of the most widely used business intelligence and data analytics platforms in the world. Power BI is cloud-based and delivered on the Azure Cloud. On-prem capabilities also exist for individual users or when power users are authoring complex data mashups using in-house data sources. Power BI is unique because it enables users to do data preparation, data discovery, and dashboards with the same design tool. The platform integrates with Excel and Office 365 and has a very active user community that extends the tool’s capabilities.

To create dashboards, you can connect to Power BI gateways, SQL Server databases, Analytical Services, and other data sources. To give you a unified experience, reporting portals embed Power BI dashboards and reports. A Power BI dashboard, also known as a canvas, is a page that uses visualizations to tell a story. A dashboard that is well designed contains only the most essential elements of that story because it is just one page. A dashboard is more than a pretty picture. It is interactive and customizable. As the data changes, the tiles will update.

Tiles are used to describe visualizations on the dashboard. These tiles can be pinned to the dashboard using reports. Each report is responsible for the visualizations displayed on a dashboard. One way to view a dashboard is to see it as an entry point to the underlying data sets and reports. Clicking on a visualization will take you to the report and data set used in creating it.

Dashboards can be a great way to keep track of your business, find answers, and see the most important metrics in one place. A dashboard can be derived from one or more underlying data sets or from one or more underlying reports. A dashboard can combine on-premises data with cloud-born data to provide a single view, regardless of where it is located.

Download Link to Business Intelligence & Data Analytics Buyer's Guide

Power BI Dashboard Example Template

An example of a Power BI dashboard with multiple data types can help you understand the benefits of Power BI. Each data type has the potential for valuable business insights. Consider a retail superstore, where data can be used to unlock insights about regional sales, individual store transactions, and product categories.

The following points are relevant to the business perspective of the use case:

  • Which region is more profitable than others?
  • What customer segments should you be focusing on?
  • Identify segments that can reduce investment.

To gain insights on the abovementioned points, you’ll need to change how data is processed. The goal is to increase business productivity and profitability. Let’s see what insights we can gain from superstore data.

  1. Superstore sales and performance: It is the first step to gaining an understanding of the superstore’s performance over time. We need data on sales for different regions every quarter. It is also essential to determine which regions are more profitable than others.
  2. Performance of different states: Once we have region-wise information on profits and losses, it is possible to create a scatterplot of “sales vs. profit” at state and regional levels, with sales and profit being X and Y, respectively. To understand different situations, these states can be mapped. A business might decide to invest more in a state with lower sales but higher profits. If sales are rising but profits are falling, another state could be flagged.
  3. Performance of different customer segments: It’s also essential for a business to identify which customer segment is driving sales in different areas. A pie chart showing customer segments and sales/ profits can be used to help businesses plan future strategies. For example, the B2B consumer segment may be driving the highest profit but has very few sales. There is an enormous opportunity to grow the B2B segment.
  4. Revenue generation per category: We can obtain data about specific product categories within specific regions or customer segments and compare them (in terms of sales and profits). It is possible to gain valuable insights to help you plan for the future.

Total Sales and Profits

The screenshot below shows that I used the map representation and gave state and ‘profit’ fields. This visualization shows us state-specific ‘profit leaders.’ Larger bubbles represent these.

This visualization can be saved or published immediately. Instead, I would add a page for each visualization and publish the entire report. This will allow you to pin the visualizations to the Power BI dashboard easily and prevent you from cluttering one page with multiple visualizations.

You can do this easily by clicking on the plus sign at the bottom left of the screen. Your new page will be created. This will allow me to create the next visualization.

I selected a line graph to visualize the fields of profits, sales, and order date. After the visualization was created, I changed the timeline to show ‘quarterly’ instead of ‘yearly.’ This can be done by clicking the navigation located in the top right corner. The same is true for the image below.

The above image clearly shows that sales increased in the second quarter. Interactive visualizations can be used. The graph will display stats if you drag the mouse pointer over it, just as it does in the image.

Performance of Different States

The following visualization shows me creating a scatterplot, with X-axis representing sales and Y as profit. I selected some for the profit and sales axis.

This visualization can be used to help us split the states into three strategic business focus areas: Retain. Develop. Divest. States in the top right corner have high sales and profits, and businesses would like to keep this position. The business can look at states to the right or median line as an opportunity. This is where the growth in sales could help increase the business profit – Develop a strategy. The states with low sales, low profits, or higher sales but lower profits are not areas where the business should be focusing on divesting. This is a great way to formulate a business investment strategy.

Performance of Different Customer Segments

We can now see which consumer segments are driving sales and profits at the state and region level and determine which segment to target (corporate, customer, and Home Office).

We can see, for example, that the Central region’s consumer segment contributes to 50 percent of sales but has a low-profit share. However, the corporate segment has a higher profit share and lower sales contribution. The business should increase the corporate sales contribution to improve its profitability.

Revenue Generating by Category

Next, we can derive insights at the product category level. It is possible to determine which product has the highest sales and profits in each region or consumer segment. How the different product categories performed in terms of sales and profits.

Power BI allows you to add multiple filters to your data in order to obtain the precise insight you are looking for. To change the data representation, click the drill-down button located in the upper left corner. To view superstore sales, you can drill down to see them by category or sub-category to suit your needs.

Share This

Related Posts

Insight Jam Ad

Latest Posts

Insight Jam Ad

Follow Solutions Review