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Efficient stock management is essential for the success of any company that works with physical products. Inadequate control can lead to significant losses, either due to an excess of idle goods, which increases operational costs, or due to the lack of essential items, leading to lost sales and customer dissatisfaction.
To avoid these problems, many companies are investing in technology, and the Power BI stock control dashboard emerges as a strategic solution to accurately and in real time monitor stock levels.
The use of dashboards allows companies to monitor key indicators, optimizing decision-making and ensuring a healthy balance between supply and demand. In addition to facilitating data analysis, these dashboards help reduce costs, minimize waste, and improve the efficiency of logistical processes.
But what are the most important indicators for an efficient Power BI stock control dashboard? In this article, we explore the essential metrics to ensure strategic and data-driven management.
What is a stock control dashboard in Power BI?
A stock control dashboard in Power BI is a data visualization tool that allows for dynamic and intuitive monitoring and management of stock levels. With it, companies in various sectors can consolidate essential information about inputs, outputs, demands, shortages, and other key indicators in a single interactive panel.
This way, managers can monitor product movements in real time and make more assertive decisions to avoid waste or stockouts.
Advantages of using dashboards in stock control
The adoption of stock control dashboards in Power BI offers several advantages for both operational and strategic management, such as:
- Constant Monitoring: Allows you to track stock levels in real time or with D-1 frequency, reducing the risk of manual errors and shortages of essential products.
- Cost Reduction: By identifying consumption patterns and product movements, companies can optimize replenishment and avoid excess or shortages.
- Greater Efficiency in Purchasing Management: Dashboards help forecast future demand based on historical data, enabling more strategic negotiations with suppliers.
- Automation and Integration: Power BI connects to various data sources, such as ERPs and spreadsheets, eliminating the need for manual updates.
- Time Optimization: Information is interpreted more quickly and efficiently by employees, allowing the time that would have been spent on these activities to be used for other functions, improving team productivity.
How Power BI Stands Out in Data Visualization and Strategic Decision-Making
The major differentiator of Power BI lies in its ability to transform large volumes of raw data into strategic information through graphs, dynamic tables, and interactive dashboards.
With its advanced data intelligence and machine learningcapabilities, the tool enables companies to analyze consumption trends, identify supply chain bottlenecks, and optimize their operational processes.
Additionally, Power BI offers customization options, allowing each company to configure its stock control dashboard according to its specific needs and challenges.
Examples of customized dashboards for different business types
Each sector has its own peculiarities in stock control. Therefore, a dashboard in Power BI can be adapted according to the needs of each business type. Some examples include:
- Retail: A panel with indicators such as stock turnover, top-selling products, replenishment level, demand forecasting, product arrival dates, and the number of orders already placed.
- Industry: A dashboard focused on raw material control, consumption by production line, and delivery deadlines.
- E-commerce: Monitoring stock by sales channel, SKU management, and real-time order tracking.
- Healthcare and Pharmacies: Rigorous control of medications, product expiration dates, and movement by service units.
Regardless of the sector, a stock control dashboard in Power BI becomes an indispensable ally to ensure efficient management based on reliable data .
Interested? Stay tuned for the next sections to discover which indicators are essential in stock control panels for your business.
Key Indicators for a Stock Control Dashboard in Power BI
A stock control dashboard in Power BI should include strategic indicators that provide a clear view of the quantity of stored products, movements, costs, and operational efficiency.
These KPIs help the company avoid waste, ensure optimal stock levels, and reduce unnecessary costs. Among the main indicators that must be included in an efficient stock control panel are:
Stock Level Indicators
These are essential to ensure that the company has the ideal quantity of products stored, avoiding both excess and shortage. Some key KPIs in this regard are:
- Stock Quantity by Product and Product Size: Displays the current stock of each item and allows comparison with the recommended minimum and maximum levels. This indicator is crucial to prevent shortages or excessive stock.
- Stock Coverage: Measures the number of days that the current stock can meet the projected demand, helping to predict when products will need to be replenished. This calculation can be based on the average daily consumption of items.
- Stockout Rate: Indicates how often a product is out of stock, which can affect sales and customer satisfaction. A high stockout rate may indicate planning failures or issues in the supply chain.
With these indicators, the company can dynamically monitor stock levels and optimize the replenishment of goods, ensuring a balance between supply and demand.
Financial Indicators of Stock
Stock financial indicators are essential to measure the economic impact of merchandise management and ensure efficient control of operational costs. The most relevant include:
- Total Stock Value: Represents the total cost of products stored during a specific period. This indicator is crucial for measuring the capital invested in stock and better planning the company's cash flow.
- Average Stock Cost: Calculates the average cost of products over time, considering factors such as price variation and replenishment of goods. This KPI helps with product pricing and profit margin analysis.
- Losses and Damages: Monitors the financial impact of damaged, expired, or lost products. This indicator helps identify storage, transportation, or item validity control failures.
With these indicators, companies can make more strategic decisions to reduce costs, avoid waste, and maximize stock profitability.
How to create a stock control dashboard in Power BI?
Get ready to boost your results! Learn how to create your stock control dashboard in Power BI. With this tool, you will be able to monitor your stock levels, costs, and demand in real time, optimizing your strategic decision-making.
But first, it's necessary to follow some essential steps, from connecting to data sources to customizing visualizations. Check out the detailed step-by-step guide to setting up a stock control dashboard in Power BI, along with tools and best practices that ensure efficiency and usability in data analysis:
Step-by-Step guide to setting up a dashboard in Power BI
1. Connect to Databases
The first step is to import stock data. Power BI allows connections to various sources, such as ERP systems, Excel spreadsheets, SQL databases, APIs, and e-commerce platforms. To connect a data source, go to Power BI Desktop > Get Data and select the source (e.g., SQL Server, Excel, Google Sheets).
2. Data Modeling
After importing the data, it is essential to structure it properly to ensure that the relationships between tables are correct. In Power Query, remove unnecessary columns, adjust formats, and create custom metrics using DAX (Data Analysis Expressions).
Establish relationships between tables, such as orders, products, suppliers, and stock movements, ensuring that KPIs reflect accurate information.
3. Creating Visualizations
With the data structured, it is time to create interactive graphs and tables in the Power BI Report View. Insert bar charts, pivot tables, KPI cards, and data slicers to facilitate the analysis of key indicators, such as stock levels, average cost, and stockout rates. Use filters and slicers to enable detailed analysis by product category, period, and supplier.
4. Publishing and Sharing
After completing the dashboard, publish it in Power BI Service so that other team members can access and interact with the data. Set permissions to ensure data security and control over the information displayed.
Essential Power BI Tools and Features for Stock Analysis
To obtain an efficient and dynamic dashboard, Power BI offers several features that facilitate data analysis. Some of the most important include:
- DAX Measures: Allow custom calculations, such as stock coverage and weighted average cost.
- Data Slicers: Facilitate filtering information by period, product, category, or supplier.
- Interactive Charts: Such as bar, pie, and scatter charts, making visual analysis more intuitive.
- Performance Indicators (KPIs): Display key metrics clearly and objectively, aiding in quick decision-making.
- Automatic Updates: Connections to databases allow reports to be periodically updated without manual intervention.
Best design practices for dashboards
To ensure that the Power BI stock control dashboard is effective and easy to interpret, it is essential to follow some best design practices:
✅ Readability: Use a well-organized layout, separating KPI sections, charts, and tables.
✅ Strategic Use of Colors: Highlight important information using colors (e.g., green for adequate stock levels and red for stockouts).
✅ Avoid Visual Clutter: Do not overload the dashboard with too many charts; focus on essential indicators.
✅ Interactivity: Enable data segmentation so users can explore insights dynamically.
✅ Responsiveness: Ensure that the dashboard is accessible on both desktops and mobile devices.
Creating a stock control dashboard in Power BI is a strategic step for companies that want to optimize merchandise management, reduce costs, and improve operational efficiency. By following a well-structured process of data connection, modeling, and visualization and applying best design practices, it is possible to build a highly informative and easy-to-interpret panel.
Rely on Expert Support to Build Your Dashboard
Hiring a specialized consultancy to build your stock control dashboard in Power BI is a strategic decision for companies looking to optimize merchandise management and gain valuable insights quickly.
Creating an efficient dashboard requires technical knowledge in data connection and modeling and in defining strategic KPIs, ensuring that the presented metrics are genuinely useful for decision-making.
With the support of experts, such as the equal BI, the company avoids common mistakes, such as inconsistent data, confusing visualizations, and difficulties in automatically updating information, ensuring a well-structured and easy-to-interpret panel.
Beyond technical implementation, consultancy provides an important differentiator: customizing the dashboard according to the business's specific needs. Each sector has specific challenges in stock control, and a generic approach may not provide the necessary insights.
Specialized consultants analyze the company's demands and develop tailored indicators, considering factors such as seasonality, product demand, operational costs, and future projections. This way, the company has a highly functional dashboard with relevant metrics and intuitive visualizations, allowing for precise stock level monitoring and waste reduction.
Another essential benefit of hiring consultancy is the ongoing training and support. A stock control dashboard in Power BI will only be truly effective if the team knows how to use it correctly and extract maximum value from the presented data. With expert support, employees are trained to interpret reports, apply filters, identify patterns, and make data-driven decisions.
Moreover, the consultancy can provide technical support and continuous improvements, ensuring that the dashboard keeps pace with the company's growth and new business needs. Thus, the company gains operational efficiency, reduces costs, and improves its planning capabilities, making stock management a highly strategic process.
Case: Stock Control in the Santa Apolônia Retail Network
A rede de Santa Apolônia Hospitalar (SAH), a retail chain specializing in health-related products, is a leading name in its segment in the state of Santa Catarina. In 2019, the company transitioned its management strategy to Business Intelligence with Power BI.
The top management of the company has been using data for decision-making for a long time, but until 2019, everything was done using Excel spreadsheets, making the analyses less complex and the operational task of compiling data more time-consuming.
With the growth of the network and the increasing volume of data to be analyzed, the CEO of SAH decided to invest in a data team. It was then that André Azevedo, the current CEO of Equal BI and a former employee of the retail chain, began the work of automating the network’s BI.
Data started being collected and stored in a Data Warehouse, feeding Power BI dashboards. Thus, SAH’s data-driven culture was solidified.
Three very important cases in the work carried out at the Santa Apolônia network involve stock management, and the analyses conducted also led to positive results for the company’s Purchasing and Logistics departments. These cases are:
Santa’s Slow-Moving Items
The panel was developed to identify products that have been in stock for a long time compared to the days they were not sold in the store. Based on this analysis, the Purchasing and Commercial departments can take actions to optimize stock management, such as planning replenishments, creating promotions to accelerate the sale of stagnant items, or even discontinuing specific products that are not moving.
Costly Order
Implantamos uma estratégia de ‘pedido oneroso’, definindo regras baseadas em dias de estoque para otimizar pedidos entre filiais. O resultado foi uma economia notável nas requisições das lojas para o Centro de Distribuição (CD) da rede. A quantidade de pedidos que era de 16 mil/mês passou para 12 mil – dessa maneira a quantidade de viagens feitas até o CD para buscar produtos diminuíram, otimizando o trabalho do departamento de Logística da rede e reduzindo custos como combustível.
Order Verification
A dashboard was created to automate the comparison of product orders placed with the Purchasing department, which was previously done manually. Before, employees had to open supplier spreadsheets in different formats and compare the quantities ordered and received, which took more than a day of work. With the new dashboard, the spreadsheets are automatically loaded and efficiently compared, quickly highlighting discrepancies and reducing the analysis time to less than 45 minutes, increasing productivity and accuracy in stock control.
Is Your Company Managing Stock the Best Way Possible?
If your company deals with the sale of products, whether through physical stores or e-commerce, and you are not yet exploring the possibilities of Business Intelligence and dashboards for stock control, now is the time to act. Investing in data analysis means not only improving and professionalizing the management of your business but also keeping up with market changes and staying one step ahead of the competition.
Discover how BI can transform your company! Contact our team of specialists and take the first step toward more intelligent and strategic management.
