Why Hiring Power BI Experts To Overhaul A Report Is Worth It

If there is one thing that the Vision BI team has learned, it is that at times, Power BI appears deceptively easy to start on..and very, very easy to get wrong.

In almost every business we work with ranging from accounting firms, engineering practices, builders, logistics operators, professional services organisations and manufacturers, the story starts the same way. Often it begins with; “someone internally is “pretty good with Power BI.”

We even understand the personas behind this approach:

Maybe it’s an accountant who likes data
Maybe it’s the IT bloke who built a dashboard once.
Maybe it’s the operations manager trying to solve an inventory problem who watched a YouTube tutorial.

No matter what, it often runs the same way…They get something up and running, people love it and the leadership team wants more.

And it is when this occurs that it seems to be the same time that the problems begin as capacity outpaces capability.

So here is our quick guideline of how to avoid the mess that some businesses end up when they embark on the Power BI journey.

The Internal Power BI Lifecycle

Stage 1: Someone Knows Enough To Be ‘Dangerous’

It starts off well, like most things tend to do (what do they say about good intentions and paths…)

A motivated staff member, looking to solve a real problem within the business builds a few reports, connects some spreadsheets, publishes to the Power BI Services and suddenly the business gets a taste of real reporting.

But they don’t understand:

Data Gateways
Scheduled refresh infrastructure
Version control
Dataset design
Row-level security
API limits
Governance
Capacity planning
Semantic modelling
Change management

What has happened here though is that they’ve built a few reports but not an actual reporting system.

Stage 2: Things Break, So They Hire an IT Guy

Refresh failures.
Credential issues.
Gateway offline.
Reports not updating.
Files too large.
Everything slowing down.

So of course the business does the logical thing and phones the IT department or their Managed Services Provider. Except these people (as helpful as they are) aren’t BI engineers. They fix the gateway, patch some connectors, maybe restart the server - but they don’t rebuild the architecture, with the real challenge being that the underlying problems remain.

Stage 3: People Start Making Their Own Reports

Someone asks for a new metric, or a slightly different metric or another team wants a copy of an existing report this time they want it ‘customised.’

Since there is no semantic model and no data governance:

People download datasets
Modify reports
Republish under their own workspace
Create their own data sources
Duplicate metrics
Duplicate calculations
Create different definitions of the same thing

When this happens it has multiple flow on effects as utilisation exists in six versions, gross profit is calculated four different ways and the WIP depends on which report you look at. When this happens, the real problem emerges which is that nobody trusts the numbers anymore

Stage 4: Weeks Pass and Everything Is a Mess

People leave and new people arrive and priorities change. Fast forward a few weeks and months and the organisation now has:

Hundreds of abandoned datasets
Dozens of unmanaged gateways
Expired credentials
Reports you cannot refresh
Reports pointing to legacy exports no one maintains
A Frankenstein folder of PBIX files
No documentation
No governance
No central ownership
And a shocking number of unused Power BI Pro licences

When we audit environments, it’s common to see 20–50 paid licences for people who haven’t logged in once. Does this sound familiar?

This is the point where most businesses finally call us.

Why You Need an Expert: Because BI Is Not About Reports It’s About Architecture

Power BI isn’t a reporting tool. It’s the last 5% of an entire analytics ecosystem.

An expert isn’t valuable because they make pretty charts, they’re valuable because they design everything underneath the charts:

Data Architecture: APIs, SQL extraction, warehouse design, automated ingestion, schema management, error handling.
Data Modelling: Star schema design, semantic models, measure logic, business rules, consolidations, forecasting logic.
Governance: Workspaces, access rules, version control, RLS, auditing, lifecycle management.
Operationalisation: Scheduled refresh, capacity planning, retry logic, monitoring, alerts, system health.
Commercial Interpretation: WIP, lock-up, utilisation, margin, throughput, job performance, debtor exposure — correctly defined, consistently measured.
Systems Thinking: Understanding your practice management system, ERP, WMS, telematics, job system, finance system, CRM and engineering how they all feed into a single point of truth.

This is not something you patch together in your spare time.

What Vision BI Does:

It centralises, cleans, organises and transforms data into meaningful information.

When we walk into an environment that has evolved organically (or chaotically), our job is to rebuild it with order, clarity and scalability.

1. We Centralise

One semantic model.
One data warehouse.
One source of truth.

Metrics exist once, across the organisation.

2. We Clean

We remove:

Duplicate datasets
Legacy connections
Broken refreshes
Orphaned workspaces
Abandoned reports
Redundant licenses
Outdated dataset credentials

And create a clean, governed, documented environment.

3. We Organise

We design:

A proper Centre of Excellence
Workspace structure
Data governance
Security models
Refresh schedules
Access rules
Development standards
Dev/Test/Prod pipelines

Everything your internal people wish existed, but never had time or expertise to build.

4. We Transform

This is the part everyone sees:

Fast, reliable, trusted dashboards
Executive scorecards
Manager reporting
Operational live views
Forecasting and scenario models
Email alerts and workflows

But it only works because the foundations are engineered properly

Why an Accountant-Led BI Team Beats “Just a Power BI Expert”

Most BI teams don’t understand accounting.Most accountants don’t understand BI.

Vision BI sits in the middle:

Chartered Accountant leadership (WIP, lock-up, group structures, budgeting, QBCC, revenue recognition)
Full-stack BI engineers (APIs, SQL, Azure Data Factory, serverless, automation)
Analysts who understand operations (construction, logistics, manufacturing, professional services, finance)

This combination means your reporting actually makes commercial sense, not just technical sense.

The Result?

A Power BI Environment That Doesn’t Collapse in 18 Months**

When Vision BI is engaged, businesses finally get:

A sustainable reporting ecosystem
A single metric definition for the entire organisation
A well-governed environment that won’t implode when staff change
A model that scales with growth
A system that leadership actually trusts
Reports that refresh themselves without manual intervention
A BI foundation built for the next decade, not the next quarter

This is the difference between “someone who knows Power BI” and a true intelligence partner.What we see is that Most businesses spend far more on rework, errors and delays than they ever would on doing BI properly the first time.

Vision BI helps organisations:

Clean up their existing Power BI environment
Rebuild a proper data architecture
Establish governance and a Centre of Excellence
Define consistent KPIs and financial logic
Deliver fast, trusted, automated reporting
Scale BI as the business grows

No templates, no cookie-cutter dashboards, no “Power BI developers” who only touch the visual layer.

Just full-stack intelligence engineering, led by accountants who understand business reality.

Ready to Turn Your Reporting Chaos Into a Centre of Excellence?

Book a short discovery call with Vision BI. We’ll review your current environment, diagnose the root issues, and show you what a modern end-to-end intelligence solution should look like.

👉 Click here to book a consultation or demo to see how Vision BI can help you securely deliver Power BI across your business.

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