A new Power BI dashboard highlights common themes of employee ideas
Case Study Summary: Springhouse designs a Microsoft Power BI portal that visualizes and summarizes employee-inspired business innovation suggestions
Good ideas inspire new ideas. Take one of our manufacturing clients, for example. A few years ago, we collaborated with them on a project encouraging employees from across the organization to give their business improvement ideas. Using Microsoft Power Apps and SharePoint, we modernized the suggestion box concept so they could welcome more boots-on-the-ground voices into the conversation.
The Power App we designed collects, evaluates, and prioritizes the ideas for their Innovation Team.
Establishing a way for employees to send their ideas showed a commitment to its staff. The app was also designed for its bilingual audience. For our client, the next phase of this solution was the creation of an Innovation Dashboard. The goal was to track and display the inventory of fresh ideas at a glance.
“We used Microsoft Power BI to analyze the data submitted through the custom app and display the results in a visual dashboard. This gives the management team a snapshot of the types of ideas and where they stand in the evaluation process,” said Gary Stewart, a Microsoft 365 Solution Specialist at Springhouse.
The next innovative step
This dynamic Power BI visualization includes a chart that breaks down the ideas by status—complete, new, paused, or approved. End users also have access to graphs depicting the divisional and geographic source of the ideas and delegated departments. Another visualization categorizes the conceptual nature of the suggestions—product offerings, customer experience, or manufacturing configurations.
This employee suggestion box project originated from our client’s commitment to listening to their front-line workers. The innovative idea to develop a digital tool for company staff required a way to capture, track, and evaluate suggestions. Springhouse built upon our client’s existing Microsoft 365 subscription by using SharePoint, Power Apps, and Power BI.
Promising ideas inspire innovative ideas. Actively listening to the voices of its workforce and building upon their home-grown ideas will positively impact our client’s business development plans, and of equal importance, employee satisfaction.
Springhouse designed this Microsoft Power BI portal so the client could visualize and summarize the employee-inspired business innovations.