How to use PowerBi to manage and visualise data effectively

What is Power BI and how does it differ to other tools commonly used such as Excel?

Power BI is a data visualisation and “business intelligence” tool that is primarily used for data analysis and visualisation. Sports organisations and football clubs use it due to the ease of connecting various data sources; transforming and cleaning data; and turning data into meaningful insights as an effective way to communicate information to end users.

Historically, Excel has been the most common tool to manage data with its manual integration.

While Excel is a spreadsheet program primarily used for data entry, manipulation and simple analysis, Power BI is an intelligence tool designed for data visualisation, interactive reporting, and creating dynamic dashboards and reports for data driven decision making.

You can create charts and visualisations with Excel, but it’s limited in its ability to handle large datasets and creating complex visualisations. Add enough data and Excel becomes slow and unresponsive, with complex calculations on large datasets taking its toll.

Excel’s options for advanced visualisations and interactivity fall far short of Power BI’s.

Power BI comes with a wide range of visualisations, and more can be downloaded into the system. It allows for highly interactive reports where users can drill down into data, apply filters and explore it efficiently and dynamically.

Power BI can automatically refresh data, giving users more interactivity to explore data dynamically through reports and dashboards. Users have access to up-to-date data without manual intervention.

One of the most significant use cases of Power BI in professional sport is identifying correlations between training load and injury rates. Power BI’s ability to automatically integrate several data sources allows a more thorough representation of this data, providing a comprehensive view for identifying early signs of potential injuries, allowing for preventative measures.

Microsoft developed Power BI, so it integrates easily with Excel, Azure and Sharepoint. This makes Power BI a natural choice for organisations using the Microsoft products.

How does Power BI’s learning curve compare to other data analysis and visualisation tools? Have you found it more intuitive for other staff members to interact with than other tools?

Power BI’s learning curve can vary depending on your background and familiarity with data analysis and visualisation tools.

If you’re already proficient in Excel, you’ll find some familiarity in Power BI, since both tools are from Microsoft. The transition may be relatively smooth, but you’ll still need to learn Power BI’s specific features for data modelling and more advanced visualisations.

Power BI is designed to be user friendly and has an interface that is intuitive for most users. It strikes a balance between ease of use and robust data analysis capabilities. Power BI offers a drag and drop approach for creating visualisations and reports, which doesn’t require extensive technical knowledge. The drag and drop interface simplifies the process of creating visualisations and reports.

Compared to more complex tools like Tableau or programming languages like R, Power BI is often easier to learn, especially for beginners. On the other hand, Tableau is known for its user friendly interface, and many users find it more intuitive for creating simple visualisations.

Power BI also has a strong and active user community, which means there are plenty of forums, blogs, and tutorials. This can help users find solutions to their problems, making the learning process smoother. I started by watching YouTube, gradually relating what I was learning to my organisation and what we wanted to gain.

How we use a dashboard, report or insights will shape our colleagues’ perception of intuitiveness and the learning curve. Where a sport scientist will see a detailed output of each metric, we don’t want the head coach to get lost in too much information or clutter. That is a way to lose buy in and convey the wrong message. If you provide too much information to the coach, they will eventually not know what to look for nor where to look.

Focus on visually summarising the clear message you want to get across, emphasizing the key performance indicators. Highlight the information you want them to see and eliminate the clutter around the key message.

One of the most effective strategies is providing as much context as possible. For example, compare a player’s running stats to other players in the same position to identify certain risk factors and provide context around a potential red flag.

What are the key principles that you live by when creating visualisations in Power BI that allow you to communicate data effectively?

To get across the most effective message, you must ensure that you communicate the data clearly and accurately. Here are the five most important and influential principles to getting your message across:

• Simplicity and clarity: Keep your visualisations, reports and dashboards simple, ensuring you are focusing on the key message you’re hoping to get across to the end user. Avoid any clutter (such as unnecessary decorations) or superfluous details that divert attention away from that main message. Use clear and concise labels, titles and legends. Guide your audience throughout your report in the cleanest and simplest manner possible.
• Provide context: Always include context to help end users interpret the data. For example, adding historical data to provide a frame of reference would be an extremely effective way of getting a message across. If you are reporting strength scores from force plate data, how does this compare to the previous data collected from these athletes? Providing one absolute value may not be enough evidence to deliver quality insights and influence decision making. Other ways of providing context include subtitles, captions, noting the data source, and relevant background information.
• Consistency: Maintain a consistent style and design throughout your dashboards and reports. Consistency helps users quickly understand and navigate your visualisations. This includes design elements such as fonts, colours and formatting. A purposeful use of colour can highlight and differentiate data points. However, there is a fine line, over which an excessive use of colour creates confusion. White space can effectively separate visuals, drawing attention to key points and improving readability.
• Data validity and reliability: Without a doubt the most important point. Ensure data accuracy and integrity by validating your data sources, cleaning your data ,and ensuring that your data is accurate and reliable. There is no point having an amazing looking dashboard or report if the data is wrong! Double check your calculations and data sources, as wrong information destroys the purpose of relaying this information to the end users.
• Interactivity: A huge benefit of Power BI is its interactive features to allow end users to explore the data for themselves. Instead of sending multiple PDFs, features such as filters and slicers allow them to change selections, change the data they are looking at, and gain deeper insights. Not only does it get the message across more quickly and effectively, it enhances engagement and understanding.

In pro sport, we are all dealing with an increasing amount of data from GPS, force plates, subjective data, injury data etc. How does Power BI help you gain clarity in what to look at?

One common trend is using data to drive decision making and maybe even question the work flow. I have come across some organisations and individuals who are so data driven that data drives them – when it should be them driving the data.

We are sitting on so much information and collecting so much data that it sometimes reaches a point of “What is it actually telling us?”

The main benefit of Power BI is the ability to integrate several data sources. Power BI can connect to various data sources, allowing you to bring all your data into one centralised platform. This will make it easier to import data from Excel spreadsheets, databases and cloud services.

The built-in data transformation capabilities enable you to clean, transform, and shape your data to suit your specific analysis needs. This integration simplifies data management and ensures all relevant information is accessible in one place. For example, if you wanted to look at high speed running load from the last two weeks and correlate it with hamstring isometric tests.

Another area where Power BI can assist a sports organization is transferring data that only certain practitioners and staff (e.g., the medical team) will understand to a non-specialist, like a coach. With Power BI you can create interactive and customisable dashboards that make it easier to understand complex data sets.

Visualisation helps coaches, sports scientists, and analysts see trends, outliers, and patterns in the data. This has been extremely helpful for deriving new metrics or KPIs specific to the team’s performance or injury prevention. From there, it can provide alerts when players hit specific thresholds or meet certain conditions. This is critical for injury monitoring, as it allows you to react promptly when players are at risk.

Could you give a couple examples of dashboards or reports that you have created in Power BI?

The motivation behind creating this dashboard and report was categorised into 2 questions; How will it be useful in an applied and professional setting? Can I bring information from different departments that will help solve a problem or answer a question when it comes to Match Day performance? There is so much data collected from a match day from a physical and technical point of view that is accessible to every team in the Premier League, but how can each team use this data to their advantage?

By comparing players, you can identify a player’s strength and weakness when it comes to a match day and the way they perform. It allows you benchmark not just other players from other teams against eachother, but also your players against the best performers in the league, setting realistic goals, expectations and performance standards. For example, ahead of a weekend fixture, it could be possible to compare your midfield options to the oppositions, the heatmap data which can be sourced, as well as any other physical and tactical insights which could be influential to a team’s style of play and possible xG stats. Understanding the physical capabilities of both your own and opposition players can influence tactical decisions such as player match-ups and substitutions, as well as adjusting certain tactics based on the physical and technical strengths of players. When focusing on player development, tracking progress of younger players in the academy and comparing their outputs with established professionals can also provide a good guide for their development. Players looking to go on loan could be compared to previous success stories or current professionals from all leagues in which data is made available.

It is not only useful when it comes to match-day performance, however also scouting and recruitment which has become an integral part in the modern game. Comparative data can be vital in scouting, helping identify players who meet specific demands or exhibit exceptional qualities. The physical and technical data can augment decision-making in the transfer market, ensuring new signings align with the team’s and manager’s demands and style of play.

To summarize the motivation behind this style of report, the comparison of players physical and technical outputs as well as player profiles provides a comprehensive toolkit for enhancing player performance, team performance and team understanding. This can then be extended further when looking at injury management, planning and fostering a data-driven approach to team management.

Would you recommend a practitioner learn Power BI, and why? Do you have any recommended resources for learning Power BI?

Absolutely, because Power BI will transform your day to day practices, helping you make more informed decisions and saving a significant amount of time in the process.

Power BI skills are also high in demand in the job market, making it a valuable addition to a practitioner’s skillset and potentially enhancing career prospects. Pretty much every job in sport science explicitly requires a level of data literacy, sometimes specifically Power BI or Tableau.

Organisations are aware that Power BI is an excellent tool for creating compelling reports and dashboards that can be easily accessed by anyone, as well as ensuring all data is stored in the same location. The more time saved having to email, message or ring someone for a piece of information is vital in a fast paced environment.

My data philosophy is “Let your data drive your conversations, let your conversations inform your decisions, and let your actions be successful!” At many clubs and organisations, there are practitioners spending hours upon end manually extracting information, copying and pasting, manipulating data, all to get to the most important bit, the decision making process. All of the hours of manually dealing with data could and should be spent in the “conversations” and in the “action.”

There are hundreds of clubs and organisations in sport who may not have the manpower to look through thousands of data points and integrate this data, connecting a wide range of data sources and allowing them to analyse data from various platforms and databases.

The data collection process has to be consistent, repeatable and accurate, with a well thought out analytical process dictating the application of an appropriate analytical tool.

Power BI can save hours in this process, along with the ability to turn information into insights; produce quality evidence to inform decision making; provide a basis of evidence for both retrospective and predictive analysis; and created detailed benchmarking of player performance.

There are plenty of online resources and tutorials that are a great starting point for learning Power BI. The first two tutorials that I used are “Futbol Analysr” by Josh Trewin, and “Power BI for Sports.” Both are on YouTube. They are specific to sport science, but the skillset is transferrable across any domain.

There are also plenty of resources posted daily on LinkedIn. These often provide access to sample data, which will allow you to practice creating reports and dashboards. Hands on experience is invaluable. Connect with professionals who use Power BI on LinkedIn and join relevant professional groups to stay updated and network with others in your field.

Some of my personal material includes a “Power BI for Sports” Video Tutorial for beginners on the Science for Sport Academy page.

I will also be uploading more material and tutorials to my website www.datainsport.com. You can also contact me at arianf@datainsport.com and I would be happy to chat and help anyway when it comes to Power BI or data in sport.