Data Visualization with Microsoft Power BI

Chapter 11. Funnel Chart

For the practice, please download a special dataset.

The funnel chart is extremely popular in business reports. For years it was unavailable in Excel, so having it in a report could mean that you were using advanced business intelligence tools. Today it is available in the latest versions of Microsoft Office, and we can publicly use it, but Power BI has more options for creating brilliant reports with it.

The funnel chart displays sequential processes, where at every step the quantity is reduced. In Figure 11-1, you’ll see a good example of how the sales process progresses from initial contact with the client to presentations and negotiations prior to the deal, and finally to signing a contract.

Figure 11-1. Sales process displayed on the funnel chart

You can see that out of 134 clients on the list, our sales department has signed contracts with 20 of them; in other words, the conversion rate is around 15%. For such a simple chart, we can manage without Power BI. However, Power BI provides a more interactive way for us to look deeper into this data.

In Figure 11-2, you’ll see a section of the dashboard where we have a column chart with the number of contracts by salespersons, with the funnel underneath it. If we click on a certain salesperson’s column, the funnel will be filtered by their data.

Figure 11-2. Cross-filtration between column chart and funnel ...