Power BI – Funnel Charts

Power BI is a powerful data visualization and analytics tool that can help you quickly make sense of your data by extracting it from different data sources.

A Funnel Chart is a type of chart that is used to represent how the data moves through a process or system. It shows how data flows throughout all the stages of some process which is easy to read and understand. It represents a Linear process with sequential and connected stages.

A Funnel chart looks like a broad head and narrow neck at the bottom showing some data flow in a chart. Funnel charts are widely used to represent the sales funnels, recruitment process, and item order fulfillment process which means multiple stages of a whole long process.

Common examples:

• The different stages in an e-commerce website right from searching for a product to the final purchase stage. Usually, it is used to represent the different stages in the sales process which shows the amount of potential revenue for each stage. ( leads-> calls-> follow-up-> conversion-> final sale )
• Selection or recruitment process in which the eligible candidates get shortlisted and finally very few are selected in the final round. The stages will be ( Application for the post-> resume screening-> telephonic interview-> physical technical round-> HR round-> final offer letter )
• Inventory management have the stages as ( Get order-> processing-> approved-> packed-> dispatched-> delivered-> get review )

When to use funnel Chart:

• To track some process workflow typically with decreasing values.
• When the data is sequential and moves through stages (at least 4) and calculate its potential.
• When the number of items in the first stage is greater than the next stage and so on.
• To track bottlenecks (stage of congestion in a process), progress, and success in a process so as to improve it.
• To calculate conversions and retention rates of some processes.
• To check the health or progress of any systematic process.

Pre-requisite: You can refer to Power BI interactive dashboards for easy implementation of the following charts.

Dataset used: “CustomerSales” Excel file

Data: We will be working with “CustomerSales” data with data fields as shown in the above image. The major variables used to show the charts are as follows.

• Num of Customer: This is the variable used to show the variation (decrease) of total numbers in different stages.
• Sales Stage: This is the variable used for showing different categories in a customer sales system workflow like “Product search”, “Features check”, “Review check”, “Watchlist & cart”, and “Purchase order”.

We will be showing the steps to create a funnel chart using the Power BI Desktop tool by using a “CustomerSales” excel sheet file as given above in the “Dataset used” section.

Load Data in Power BI Desktop:

• Open Power BI Desktop.
• Get data from the selected data source using Power BI desktop. Click the “Get Data” option and select “Excel” for data source selection and extraction.

• Select the relevant desired file from the folder for data load. In this case, the file is “CustomerSales.xls”. click the “Load” button once the preview is shown for the Excel data file.

• The dashboard is seen once the file is loaded with the “Visualizations” Pane and “Data fields” Pane which stores the different variables of the data file.

• In the “Visualizations” pane, we can select the chart type needed for our visual representation of business data. In the following image, the red-colored square represents the “funnel” chart that can be dragged for the “Report” view for further process.

• Funnel Charts: Click on the “funnel chart” in the “Visualizations” pane. This creates a chart box in the canvas. Resize after the drag as per the user’s requirement and set options for “Category”, “Values” and other fields. The average of “Num of customer” is taken for the “Values” and “Sales Stage” is taken or dragged for the “Category” field. This example shows simple usage, the user can set and explore other fields and options.

Output: The following shows the funnel chart for the average of number of customers through different sales stages.

• On hovering over the different bars in the funnel chart, the user can get more details or insights into the data for analysis. The following shows details for the “Review Check” stage.

• The following shows details for the “Purchase Order” stage.

Note: The design part can be customized according to the need or requirement by using the visual tool.

Format label Content: From the Visualizations pane, the user can change the look and feel of the funnel chart for a better understanding. The gradient of similar colored bars or stages can confuse the reader easily, so the user can change the colors and format labeling. Use the red icon to do the formatting changes.

To change the labels, set the options as required. Here we select labels to be displayed in the center with data values and the percentage value of the previous stage.

After changing the above setting, we get the following visual.

Format Color Change: The user can set the colors also as per the requirement so that all the stages are clear and concise avoiding any sort of confusion for the reader. Use the visualization pane for the color formats.

With the color selection, we get the following output

Output:

Conclusion: Power BI funnel charts are a great way to represent the flow of data of a process by different stages. It helps in monitoring or identifying areas that are underperforming and makes quick data analysis for important insights and metrics.