• January 27, 2026

Rethinking data: Why Power BI became a game changer for our organisation.

Naomi Aitken, General Manager of NATA Education & Advisory Services, has spent years immersed in Excel and data analysis, but the growing need to analyse information faster and more effectively led her to rethink how data was being used across the organisation.

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I’ve lived and breathed spreadsheets for most of my professional life. As an ex-Microsoft Office trainer with a long-standing obsession with Excel — complete with lookups, pivot tables, and all the clever formulas — I genuinely believed I had data analysis well and truly covered. Excel had been my go-to for years, and I was confident I could make it do just about anything I needed. That was until Power BI entered the picture and completely changed the way I thought about working with data.

As General Manager of NATA Education & Advisory Services, my need to analyse data quickly and accurately is not optional — it’s essential. Our business manages a wide range of information across finance, clients, course delivery, enrolments and future planning. While Excel always got us there, it often took a long time, and relied heavily on manual work, multiple spreadsheets and tricky data manipulation. I knew there had to be a smarter, more efficient way to bring everything together so I could make sense of it – I just hadn’t found it yet.

Then I reconnected with an ex-colleague, Sean, now working as a Business Intelligence Data Consultant, who showed me what Microsoft Power BI could do – and I was thoroughly impressed. Watching multiple data sources come together into one clear, connected view felt like a lightbulb moment. Instead of juggling spreadsheets, the data flowed into a single space where patterns, trends and results were immediately visible.

What stood out, was how approachable it all felt. Power BI made analysing data feel far less intimidating than I’d expected. Business insights that once took hours of preparation could be explored quickly and confidently. More importantly, the way information could be presented visually meant the story behind the numbers was clear — not just to data people, but to everyone.

I invited Sean to run a Power BI training session with our team, and it was a valuable and business shifting experience. Conversations changed. Instead of debating whose spreadsheet was right, we were discussing what the data was telling us, and what actions we should take – and we were excited about the possibilities these insights would have on our business.

Power BI is now an integral part of our day-to-day operations. We use it for client reporting, revenue tracking, forecasting, enrolment trends, reporting on operational performance and setting strategy. It has proven invaluable for budget tracking, sales and pipeline analysis, workload planning, and leadership decision making, by helping identify areas of focus and strategic direction, and more.

What I’ve realised is that Power BI doesn’t just help analyse the data — it helps people engage with it. Reports are easy to create and navigate, informative, interactive, to designed to answer real business questions. You can dig into the detail when you need, or step back and see the bigger picture without being overwhelmed.

As a team, we quickly reached a shared conclusion: if training in Power BI had made this much difference for us, our clients needed access to the same capability. We knew that organisations of all sizes could benefit from faster insights, clearer reporting and better decision-making. That’s why we decided to offer Power BI courses through NATA Education & Advisory Services — to help our clients see that data analysis doesn’t have to be hard, and that presenting data can be exciting.

Power BI hasn’t replaced my love of Excel — but it has raised the bar. It’s changed how our team think about data, talk about data, and how we use data to move forward. Once you see what’s possible, there’s no going back.

Click to get more information on our Power BI: Essentials and Power BI: Report Design courses.