Back before Power BI had become the industry’s leading business intelligence platform - it was the saving grace in helping me avoid a Valentine’s Day disaster.
Back in 2017, I had just finished up a day-long Power BI training at Microsoft. As I got into my car to begin my journey home - I realized it was Valentine’s Day and I had nothing for my wife. I admit I usually put off Valentine’s Day planning to the last minute. However, this year it had completely slipped my mind amidst the chaos of young kids and a chaotic work schedule.
“ I had built a Power BI Valentine in less than an hour.””
In a bit of a panic, my mind immediately went to overpriced flowers and chocolate. That wasn’t going to cut it this year - I needed something with a personal touch.
The moment I settled on writing her a handwritten card, I thought to myself “what if I build her a Power BI Dashboard instead?!” At the end of the day, a tool like Power BI is simply an instrument to communicate complex information in a simple and efficient manner.
I immediately called a close friend who tried to talk me off the ledge, and tried his best to convince me it would be a complete failure. He suggested jewelry as an alternative. Thanks Steve. Instead, I followed my gut and pulled off into a coffee shop.
I mocked up a simple Excel dataset highlighting my wife’s greatest qualities, our favorite memories, favorite hobbies and the total number of days we had been married. In less than an hour I had built a Power BI Valentine and e-mailed it off to my wife.
When I walked in the door, she was getting our boys bathed and ready for bed. I asked her to check her e-mail, which she quickly chirped back saying “not right now” as she saw my empty hands.
She begrudgingly agreed to open her e-mail. Moments later she turned around smiling and said, “that is actually really-really sweet”.
“That is actually really-really sweet””
If we focus on the KPI’s we can conclude that women love hearing what their best qualities are and remembering all the great memories they’ve shared with you.
Sure St. Valentine was an Italian doctor and I’m just and ordinary data guy. However, in this business we like to measure return-on-investment (ROI). Well we just celebrated our 10th anniversary, and added a 4th son to the bunch. I’d say that’s a pretty good ROI.
Thank you Power BI for saving Valentine’s Day.
**Update since the article was originally published in 2020, Robert now has 5 sons and will celebrate 15 years of marriage this coming fall.
Robert Gerads is CEO of Fulton Analytics, a data analytics strategy and consulting firm based in St. Paul, MN. He is also the founder of the Twin Cities Power BI Meetup.