Power BI Consultant India: Choose Well
Choose an enterprise Power BI consultant in India with six questions on data models, performance, ERP integration, validation and delivery.
Read article →
✍️ Insights
Field Notes on Power BI
Field Notes on Power BI
and Data Architecture
Twenty-six articles on Power BI modelling, ETL architecture, KPI design and ERP integration — written by Smit Chandarana, who spent seven years building this infrastructure at Honda, General Motors and Microsoft. Every article comes out of delivered work, with the numbers attached.
What's Covered
Power BI modelling and DAX, ETL and ELT architecture, KPI design, ERP integration, and the failure modes specific to each. Topics follow the delivery work across six industries, from automotive supply chains to clinical patient flow.
Who Should Read It
Analytics leads choosing an architecture. CFOs deciding what belongs on a dashboard. Engineers inheriting a pipeline somebody else built. Each article assumes you can read a schema and would rather have the trade-off than the recommendation.
Where It Comes From
Seven years inside the data operations of Honda, General Motors and Microsoft, then six industries at Phoenix Solutions. The figures quoted in these articles — 85% faster ETL, 22% fewer unplanned outages — come from the case studies on this site, not from vendor research.
Start Here
Three Articles,
By What You Do
Twenty-six articles is more than anyone reads in one sitting. If you only read one, make it the one for your job.
All Articles
Every Article,
Newest First
All Articles
📊 Business Intelligence
📊 Power BI
🎯 Strategy
⚙️ Data Engineering
🔗 ERP Integration
⚙️ Automation
🤖 AI
AI Won't Fix Your Data Analysis
AI speeds up the mechanical parts of analysis and quietly amplifies a weak data foundation. Where it genuinely helps, where it misleads, and what to put in place first.
Read article →Why You Need a Dashboard Expert, Not Just a Tool
Buying Power BI does not give you a useful dashboard. What a dashboard expert actually fixes, seven signs you need one, and when you can do without.
Read article →Real-Time KPI Dashboards for Retail
Retailers relying on batch reports from yesterday are already behind. Track conversion, AOV, inventory turnover and foot traffic as it happens.
Read article →5 Data Quality Issues Hurting Healthcare Analytics
Duplicates, missing values and inconsistent formats quietly destroy clinical analytics. The five worst offenders, and how AI frameworks fix them.
Read article →ERP + AI: Real-Time Supply Chain Analytics
Your ERP holds rich supply chain data, but manual exports leave you blind. How AI-driven ERP analytics delivers visibility and cuts stockouts.
Read article →How AI-Powered BI Is Transforming Finance in 2026
Finance teams still consolidating in Excel are losing ground. How AI-powered BI removes data prep, delivers real-time insight and frees up your CFO.
Read article →Top Data Trends
Discover the top 5 data analytics trends for SMBs in 2026 and learn how to cut reporting time in half with actionable insights and measurable benefits
Read article →Cloud Business Intelligence: Implementation Guide
A practical guide to implementing cloud-based business intelligence: architecture choices, migration steps and the real-time reporting payoff.
Read article →Data-Driven Transformation with Business Intelligence
How business intelligence reshapes modern enterprises, turning scattered reporting into decisions leadership can make with confidence.
Read article →Optimizing OLAP Query Times for Faster BI
Slow OLAP queries stall decision-making. Practical techniques to cut query times and make business intelligence responsive enough to actually use.
Read article →Designing Effective KPIs: A Guide for Leaders
How to design KPIs that actually drive decisions and business growth, from metric selection to the scorecard your team will genuinely use.
Read article →Can AI Actually Answer Questions About Your Data?
Yes, with real limits. What works today, what quietly fails, and the one thing that decides whether the answers are trustworthy or confidently wrong.
Read article →Auditing a Power BI Environment You Inherited
Somebody left and you own it now. A structured first week: what to check, in what order, and which findings actually need acting on.
Read article →Your Monthly Report Takes Three Days
The monthly pack is assembled by hand every month. Here is what the automation actually looks like, what it costs to build, and where it goes wrong.
Read article →Five DAX Patterns That Kill Performance
The measures that quietly cost you seconds: FILTER over tables, nested iterators, repeated expressions, DISTINCTCOUNT misuse, and bare CALCULATE chains.
Read article →How to Diagnose a Slow Power BI Model
The measurement workflow: Performance Analyzer, DAX Studio, VertiPaq Analyzer. What each number means and which one tells you where the time goes.
Read article →Import vs DirectQuery: Choosing Correctly
Most teams pick DirectQuery for real-time data and regret it. The four questions that decide, and why composite models are usually the right answer.
Read article →Why Your Power BI File Is 2GB
Model size is driven by cardinality, not row count. The five things that actually consume memory, ranked, and how much each one typically gives back.
Read article →5 Power BI Mistakes Slowing Your Dashboards
Most Power BI dashboards fail on structure, not data. The five mistakes that destroy leadership trust, why they happen, and exactly how to fix them.
Read article →Why Power BI Disagrees With Your Excel
Your Power BI total is 4.2M and the spreadsheet says 4.35M. The four causes, how to tell which one you have, and the DAX that fixes each.
Read article →What a Power BI Project Actually Costs
Nobody publishes numbers, so buyers cannot estimate. Here are the real bands by project type, what moves them, and the costs that appear after go-live.
Read article →Power BI Q&A Is Being Retired: What To Do
Microsoft is retiring Power BI Q&A in February 2027. What breaks, what Copilot needs to replace it, and the model work to do before the deadline.
Read article →Power BI Star Schema, Explained Properly
Why the engine wants facts and dimensions, what it costs you to ignore that, and how to reshape a flat table without rebuilding every report.
Read article →Getting SAP Data Into Power BI
Four routes from SAP to Power BI, what each costs in latency and maintenance, and the licensing question to ask before you pick one.
Read article →Why Is My Power BI Dashboard Slow?
It is almost never the data volume. The four real causes, how to tell which one you have in about twenty minutes, and what each fix involves.
Read article →The KPI Framework Every CFO Dashboard Needs
Thousands of metrics exist; eight decide whether a finance dashboard drives decisions or collects dust. With exact calculation formulas.
Read article →ETL vs ELT: Which Data Architecture Fits You?
Your pipeline architecture shapes how fast your analytics team moves for the next 3-5 years. A practical guide to the real trade-offs.
Read article →Topics We Cover
The Six Subjects
These Articles Cover
✓
Power BI & Dashboard Design
Best practices for executive dashboards, DAX optimization, data model design, and row-level security.
✓
Data Pipeline Architecture
ETL vs ELT trade-offs, dbt patterns, Azure Data Factory, and choosing the right stack for your organization.
✓
KPI Frameworks & Strategy
How to select, define, and implement KPIs that actually drive decisions rather than fill dashboards.
✓
ERP Integration
Connecting SAP, Oracle, Dynamics 365, and legacy ERPs to modern analytics layers without disrupting operations.
✓
Business Intelligence Strategy
How to build BI organizations, govern data at scale, and create analytics cultures that actually stick.
✓
Resource & Project Analytics
Utilization tracking, capacity planning, and workforce analytics for professional services organizations.
Our Services