Forecasting with what-if analysis

Power BI can be used to directly support the creation of forecasts, budgets, and other planned values of future business measures and events. The relationships and logic of these datasets, which are commonly implemented in Excel formulas and maintained by business teams, can be efficiently replicated within a dedicated Power BI Desktop file. Isolating the what-if input variables from the forecast creation, storage, and visualization in Power BI enables users to more easily create, analyze, and collaborate on business forecasts.

In this recipe, a Power Desktop model is used to ingest forecast-variable inputs from Excel, and process these variables with a dynamic transformation process to generate a forecast table available for visualization. This design enables business teams to rapidly iterate on forecasts, and ultimately supports an official or approved forecast or plan that could be integrated with other data models.

Getting ready

To...