Automating collecting and monitoring commentary reports for YouKnights

The YouKnights team monitors the financial and business development of its clients’ organizations through a monthly commentary report. This report is provided by each management team and includes financial and business development commentary on human resources, commercial and operational status. In addition to these reports, the YouKnights team consults a Power BI dashboard with insights into the financial status of their investments.

1. Difficulties to compare data

The YouKnights management team recognized the need to combine the information from the comment reports with the quantitative data from the dashboard. In its current state, the monitoring process was not as efficient as desired because it was cumbersome to compare results and insights from previous months.

2. Inefficient collection of reporting information

In addition, YouKnights management team identified an inefficiency in the collection of high volume comment reports from various organizations: participants were reporting qualitative data through various channels, and there was no standard way to collect, retrieve, and store participant comment reports.

Therefore, taking the desired requirements of the YouKnights management team into account and with the combined expertise of Human Data Interaction and Data Analytics, Bright Cape created a fitting solution. 

This cross-combination of competences not only enhanced our understanding of the client’s needs, but also ensured that all key stakeholders, such as financial controllers and investment managers, were involved in the process. This was essential to understand how the solution would be implemented. 

A user-centered design approach was followed in which we:

Understand and define

User research: The Bright Cape team began by ensuring that all variables were understood, gathering requirements from YouKnights management and interviewing stakeholders.

Define data-driven requirements: These results were collected, analyzed and then translated into a set of clear requirements for the dashboard, which were validated with stakeholders.

Ideate, prototype, test

After reviewing these insights and considering possible solutions, a new phase began: prototyping and testing with various stakeholders.

Wireframing and prototyping: Based on these requirements, ideas were translated into low-fidelity wireframes to test and compare different visualization ideas.

User testing: The feature and flow were continuously tested with end users to reduce the risk of low adoption or low usability while satisfying all user types.

Continuous validation: In addition, an iterative process with regular meetings with YouKnights management was followed during this exploration phase to ensure that what was being built remained in line with their requirements.

Development phase

After this essential phase of understanding and exploring all possible alternatives, from different tools to different combinations of flows, we arrive at the solution that best meets the customer’s needs and has the least impact on the workload of other stakeholders involved. A flow in Power Automate to collect the report and automatically feed it into the Power BI dashboard.

The dashboard has been customized to integrate the new commentary report summary, so that the qualitative data from the monthly reports can be collected and combined with the quantitative financial data on the Power BI dashboard to complement the financial insights.

In addition, a third Power Automate flow was created to verify that organizations had completed the survey and to send a reminder if they had not.

This case demonstrates a practical approach for organizations facing challenges with establishing consistent financial reporting or managing financial data across multiple reporting platforms. By using Power Automate, we have provided an efficient solution for standardizing and automating financial reporting processes. This not only improves the user experience, but also ensures comparability and accuracy across the board. Contact us to learn how we can help you streamline your financial reporting setup with Power Automate and pave the way for a more efficient and effective financial management system.