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Success Story: BuildForce Canada saves on editing time by automating development of presentations

Using Microsoft Power BI, we helped BuildForce Canada automate the creation of PowerPoint presentations saving the company hundreds of editing hours.

  • Data Analysis
  • Data Visualization
  • Power BI

The Company

BuildForce Canada is an industry leader in the creation of labour market information for Canada’s construction industry. The organization produces annual forecasts on the expected levels of construction activity and its impact on the availability of labour across the country.

Project Scope

As a thought leader in the construction labour market space, BuildForce Canada is often asked to share insights with construction industry leaders to help with their workforce management. This means delivering upwards of 20 presentations annually to different stakeholders with different needs every year. Prior to working with Go Analytics, the process of presentation development was very laborious, requiring significant tinkering with charts and developing graphs and tables for PowerPoint.

The Solution

To help BuildForce Canada save time, effort, and money, Go Analytics identified Microsoft Power BI as a tool that could be leveraged to automate the presentation-building process. Since the client was a Microsoft user, the Power BI solution was a natural option as it integrates well with their other processes. Based on conversations with Mr. Ferreira, we identified that the company needed to turn their raw data into visuals that allow for filtering on geographic regions, segments of construction, and occupations. As a result of these consultations, we helped BuildForce Canada export their data and create the data model and visualizations in Power BI.

Data export: we developed a code to generate a data export from BuildForce Canada’s in-house database system, ensuring data integrity at every step. 

Data modeling: in Power BI, we connected to the data source, cleaned and transformed the data, and created custom data measures to present pertinent information to BuildForce Canada.

Data visualization: we developed a 45-slide deck in Power BI that allows users to select a province and generate an entire PowerPoint presentation with the click of a button. The deck features the ability to filter each graphic or the entire report by different tracked variables, giving the organization the flexibility to produce presentations tailored to a particular group with minimal effort.

Time-intelligence formulas: the tool also features time-intelligence formulas that eliminate the need to “move” the data for each individual chart on an annual basis. This feature permits visuals for both historical as well as forecast data, irrespective of the base year, an important feature for datasets that grow with time. Even using other available software, this task involved a certain amount of manual labour that was just completely eliminated with the Power BI tool.

“This tool simplifies the development of custom presentations. Now, when I have to deliver a presentation to a specific segment of the industry, I can isolate those data sets of greatest interest to that group quickly, which translates into less time doing custom data pulls by our team. What’s really helpful is that we can now isolate a province from a dropdown menu and the whole presentation is done. Now I can focus more of my time on analyzing the data instead of creating charts”.
Bill Ferreira
Executive Director, BuildForce Canada

The Result

The most significant impact for BuildForce Canada was freeing up time for deeper analysis of their forecasts instead of producing and editing slide decks. The organization is now able to easily create tailored presentations quickly for any particular Canadian region with just the click of a button, all while keeping all formatting consistent. As a result of the data being in the background, the company can now more easily slice and dice the data, gaining better insights in an easy-to-use tool.

With a one-time investment in the creation of the Power BI tool, BuildForce Canada is now able to capitalize for many years to come from the time and effort saved each year. Building presentation content has become significantly simpler for BuildForce Canada’s executives and allowed them to focus on deeper analysis.