P3
Empowering Businesses with Power BI

At the culmination of a decades-long story of software development, the BI industry has reached a new milestone: for the first time, BI software can respond to real-time business needs. For several decades, traditional reporting tools have lacked agility and speed, unable to cross the data silos that are inherent in business operations to generate an end-to-end performance view. Though IT professionals have filled that gap by engineering solutions that could cross the data silos, those solutions lacked flexibility, requiring careful planning and development tailored specifically to the business need. As new business needs emerged, IT had to re-engineer the solution. The limitations of the traditional tools created delays that were measured in months, if not years.

Through software advancements, especially with Microsoft Power BI, the BI industry is fundamentally changing to meet the needs of both the business and IT professionals. Power BI allows data professionals to load data from multiple sources and then cross the silos with drag-and-drop mapping, eliminating the need to engineer a solution to every new data problem. Coupling the data model with interactivity, Power BI empowers users to answer their business questions in real-time, with the ability to filter, calculate and analyze data directly in the tool.

Rob Collie, founder and CEO of BI consulting firm P3, is leading companies through this industry change. A former Microsoft engineering leader and one of the founding engineers of Power BI, Collie worked with the SQL Server teams that built BI technology in the early 2000s and then led the efforts of BI stack and Excel integration at Microsoft.

With his insider’s perspective, Collie recognized that the professional services in the market were still built around the old BI model –slow and expensive. Collie created a new kind of BI consulting firm that removes waste and friction to deliver impact in the time traditional BI projects are still in the requirements phase.“We are all about making BI more transformational and impactful for businesses. We exemplify how BI can mean more to the businesses than those conventionally tedious and expensive endeavors,” says Collie. Today, P3 is a premier consultancy firm specializing in Power BI and the Microsoft data platform, with robust offerings in consulting, training and governance of BI software adoption.

Just as Power BI is changing the BI industry, P3 is disrupting the consulting model. Using the industry leading tools, P3 creates custom solutions side-by-side with businesses.

We exemplify how BI can mean more to the businesses than those conventionally tedious and expensive endeavors

In this culture of collaboration rather than codependency, P3 eliminates high costs and long timelines of traditional BI projects and empowers organizations with knowledge and tools to respond to real-time needs of the business.

While noting that BI is always a good bet for companies, Collie points to the importance of BI in helping companies navigate the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. “When a crisis hits, you can’t trust yesterday’s map. BI can help you draw a new and accurate one quickly,” says Collie.

P3 partnered recently with SerVaas Labs, manufacturer of the well-known cleansing product Bar Keepers Friend®. P3 consultants worked with a small group of SerVaas Labs’ stakeholders during a three-day engagement to upgrade the company’s BI solution from SAP Crystal Reports to Power BI. The impact was immediate. From the first day, SerVaas Labs started uncovering previously unknown insights about their business. After three days, SerVaas Labs saw their data come to life through performance and trend dashboards. The new BI capabilities came not a moment too soon, as impacts of the COVID-19 crisis quickly spread across the company’s supply chain and retail partners. As many businesses tried to stay afloat, SerVaas Labs had a different challenge: how to manage an overnight spike in demand for their cleaning products. Using Power BI dashboards, the company was able to quickly understand the abrupt changes and recognize that growth was not happening across all segments. With the ability to analyze real-time data and make decisions, SerVaas Labs responded with production changes and adapted rapidly to keep its product in stock. “I’m super glad we never signed a deal with a different software provider,” says Matt Selig, CFO of Bar Keepers Friend. “P3’s personalized BI offering gave us the confidence we needed. There’s a lot of competitive advantage to be had, and we’re just getting started.”

With the team’s extensive experience and expertise in the Microsoft data platform, P3 is now partnering with Microsoft to develop the curriculum for a ‘Modern Analyst in a Day’ national workshop designed to introduce data analysts to Power BI, Power Pivot and Power Query. Offering robust solutions in BI consulting, training and governance, P3 continues to lead the way in helping companies respond to real-time business needs.