From Power BI to Programmable BI: How StrongMind Saved Hours of Engineering Efforts
In this case study, we’ll explore how StrongMind transitioned from Power BI to Holistics to empower over 1,000 users with self-service analytics. Using Holistics’ Canvas Dashboard, the team drastically reduced engineering time from hours to minutes, enabling them to focus more on driving impact where it matters most.
Michael Kunz, Head of Enterprise Analytics at StrongMind, is a thought leader ahead of the curve. He recognized early on the limitations of traditional BI tools—great for user-friendliness with no-code/low-code interfaces, but lacking the flexibility and scalability needed to keep up with dynamic data and fast-evolving business demands.
I don’t want to do repetitive, mundane tasks to maintain a BI platform. It’s an outdated way of doing things.
They drain BI teams’ time, keeping us from focusing on designing an analytics platform that truly delivers the best user experience and frees us from redundant, low-impacting work.
– Michael K., Head of Enterprise Analytics
StrongMind, an established leader in online curriculum and education technology, found itself at a crossroads when scaling its analytics and reporting capabilities. As StrongMind set out to give its users better access to their own data, data democratization became a key focus. However, disconnected systems, like the School Information System (SIS) and the Learning Management System (LMS), made it difficult for users to access meaningful insights. Reports were limited, and the need for quicker, more flexible data access was growing.
With a lean data team led by Michael Kunz, StrongMind centralized its data sources in Snowflake, creating a unified data hub. Using Holistics as its self-service BI tool, StrongMind turned siloed data and inefficient reporting into a data-driven culture with easy access to insights.
Beyond self-service, Holistics’ Programmable BI approach lets the team manage everything as code, including dashboards, allowing Michael and his team to parameterize widgets and reuse them at scale, anywhere, anytime. This shift has cut delivery times for content-rich executive dashboards from hours to just minutes.
Our executive dashboards have 97 widgets. If there’s a change, then I have to remake all the widgets. I found out about the functions that you can make the table names and parameters, variables.
That was a total game changer because I can now parameterize the dashboard and rebuild that 97-widget dashboard easily if I need to make it again. When I did so, it took a few minutes instead of hours. That was great.
– Michael K., Head of Enterprise Analytics
Holistics Team & Michael (StrongMind) at the 2024 Snowflake Conference
Moving away from Power BI for Programmable, Self-Service Analytics
Michael’s data team was small— yet, this lean setup had to support over 1000 users within StrongMind and its network of schools. As the company grew, so did the complexity of its data environment.
Their data was stuck in silos. Key systems like the School Information System (SIS) and the Learning Management System (LMS) didn’t communicate with each other, making it difficult to gain a unified view of their data. This left their users eager to connect these disparate datasets but unable to do so effectively.
We wanted to empower our users with the ability to use their own data, but they have disparate systems that don’t talk to each other.
A big one is the SIS, The School Information System, and The Learning Management System. They don’t talk to each other and they have limited reports and our customers were chomping at the bit to get those datasets married.
– Michael K., Head of Enterprise Analytics
The heart of the problem was centralized accessibility—or the lack thereof.
Michael knew that to solve this problem, they needed a self-service BI tool that would allow users to access and analyze their data without relying heavily on technical support. While StrongMind had attempted to use Power BI for self-service analytics, it quickly proved to be more of a barrier than a solution.
We have 600 SSRS reports and we don’t want to have 600 Power BI reports. And as we bring in more data, it’s just going to get more and more complicated.
We tried to use Power BI as a self-service, and it was an epic fail. That was before my time and it failed because it was too complicated for regular users. So when we were looking for a solution, we were looking for tools that needed to be very user-friendly and less technical than Power BI.
– Michael K., Head of Enterprise Analytics
In their search for a new BI tool, StrongMind’s focus shifted to finding a solution that was both powerful and user-friendly—something that would finally break down the silos and enable faster data access for both internal users and external customers.
Evaluating Self-Service BI Tools
Moving away from Power BI, Michael began searching for a self-service BI tool that could meet his organization’s needs. They wanted to provide users with generic overviews while also enabling them to self-serve.
The issue was getting data into the hands of schools that didn’t have the technical skills to handle raw data. We tried giving them raw data and doing all the reporting for them, but neither approach was sustainable.
We needed a self-service tool that could offer pre-built dashboards while allowing users to customize and self-serve if they had the skills.
– Michael K., Head of Enterprise Analytics
Initially, Michael considered Looker based on recommendations, but after several unsuccessful attempts to get in touch with them, he decided to explore other options. That’s when he discovered Holistics. The free trial gave him the opportunity to try out the platform and test its capabilities firsthand, which played a critical role in his decision-making process.
Some BI vendors provide an off-putting experience, those were not who I value in a long-term partner. One vendor stood out to me. I reached out to them 6-7 times with no response. If this is the kind of pre-purchase experience, I’m doubtful what I can expect post-purchase so I started looking for other options.
Holistics came up and tops the list of BI vendors for providing the best evaluation (and eventually post-purchase) experience. I experienced the minimum friction to test the tool and see if it would work for us, and from there, we moved forward.
– Michael K., Head of Enterprise Analytics
While Tableau was also considered more user-friendly than Power BI, it couldn’t match Holistics in terms of ease of user and end-user self-service experience.
Pricing also played a significant role. Most BI vendors were priced unreasonably with opaque pricing structures, but Holistics offered a transparent, flexible model that gave Michael reassurance. Holistics’ direct integration with Snowflake further solidified Michael’s decision, offering the data accessibility and flexibility needed to meet both internal and external reporting requirements.
Holistics is easier, especially for the end user, which is the goal. Tableau has more complexity, while Holistics allows users to self-serve to a certain extent without needing to know the underlying language, though it’s still available if needed.
Pricing was a factor. Looker was around $3K to $5K per month for ten users, which was too high. While Holistics is not the cheapest BI tool I evaluated, I found their pricing fair and reasonable.
Holistics also doesn’t require a user license just to receive email reports which makes it easier for us to share data with external stakeholders, without paying an additional user license. That flexibility, along with the Snowflake integration, was a major selling point for us.
– Michael K., Head of Enterprise Analytics
Turning Skeptics into Fans Building a Data Culture with Holistics
Rolling out a new BI tool to over 1,000 users, both internal and external, was no easy task, and the transition had its challenges. Some users were reluctant to leave the familiar in-house Data Insights platform and there was a huge initial resistance to change.
Before Holistics, we had an internal website called Data Insights that hosted some student data, and many customers were heavily dependent on it. When we introduced Holistics, there was a lot of resistance—people were reluctant to transition because they were used to Data Insights and didn’t want to switch to something new.
They were also worried about whether our customers would be comfortable with Holistics. There was a lot of heel-dragging.
– Michael K., Head of Enterprise Analytics
Despite the internal pushback, Michael believed that the potential of Holistics could give end users the flexibility and depth of data exploration they had been seeking.
He kept working behind the scenes, quiet but steady. His first goal was to recreate all their existing BI reports, which was a breeze thanks to Holistics’ programmatic power. Next came the setup phase, where he enabled self-service and interactivity —drill-throughs, cross-filters- for customers and internal users. Slowly but surely, both his team and customers started feeling the impact. They could see, firsthand, the benefits of a data platform they could trust and rely on, every step of the way.
And perspectives shifted.
Our users needed more insights and different levels of data aggregation, which Holistics was able to deliver.
We can create generic reports, like generic academic performance, for all our customers, and they can copy, customize, and self-serve as needed. They can add filters or they can add whatever they want to do in their version of it or share out the report.
– Michael K., Head of Enterprise Analytics
Today, more StrongMind’s users—both internal and external—were able to explore and interact with data in ways they hadn’t been able to before. There was a noticeable shift. “We have power users who like to create their own stuff, which is great,” Michael observed. Even the most skeptical users, who were previously strong advocates of Data Insights, eventually fell in love with Holistics.
One admin, who had been a strong skeptic, eventually turned around. Now, he loves Holistics, much better than the previous platform. I honestly thought he would never make the switch from Data Insights, but he’s become a big fan. If I tried to take Holistics away from him now, he wouldn’t be happy!.
– Michael K., Head of Enterprise Analytics
From Hours to Minutes: Building Dashboards Programmatically and Eliminating Repetitive Works
Holistics’ benefits extend beyond self-service and interactivity. For Michael’s team, the ability to manage dashboards programmatically was transformative, shifting time-consuming tasks into effective, manageable workflows.
Holistics offers not only a GUI but also a code-based way to programmatically build and manage dashboards. This dual setup allows them to quickly make global updates across dashboards and reports when data definitions change, reducing the need to tweak each one manually. With bulk find-and-replace capabilities, dashboards are updated in one step, bypassing the laborious manual "click-through” updates common with GUI-only BI tools.
Your DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself) philosophy resonated very well with me. The fact that I can write just BI definitions once at the semantic modeling and dashboard level and reuse them anywhere is huge.
When our dashboard logic changes, I can just update that definition in one spot, and we’re good. No more of that ‘whack-a-mole’ chaos where you’re scrambling to update every dashboard you might’ve missed. Our data team is very lean, so being able to handle bulk edits, and updates across dashboards, all without having to sift through the UI manually, is game-changing.
– Michael K., Head of Enterprise Analytics
Canvas Dashboard quickly emerged as the standout feature, allowing Michael and his team to build reusable dashboards. They could define widgets, parameters, and layouts programmatically. This meant instead of manually creating hundreds of widgets for an executive dashboard, they could define a reusable template.
Before Holistics, making small adjustments to executive dashboards could take hours. “It took me four hours to do the last one, just changing one little filter,” Michael recalled. With the Canvas Dashboard, parameterizing elements reduced the time spent on such tasks from hours to mere minutes.
Now, Michael’s team can focus on higher-value tasks rather than getting bogged down by repetitive manual work.
Our executive dashboards have 97 widgets. If there’s a change, then I have to remake all the widgets. I found out about the functions that you can make the table names and parameters, variables. [..] This one chunk of code makes 48 rows of gauges and KPIs, which I can now reuse across multiple dashboards.
It was a total game changer because I can now parameterize the dashboard and rebuild that 97-widget dashboard easily if I need to make it again. When I did so, it took a few minutes instead of hours.
– Michael K., Head of Enterprise Analytics
With Canvas Dashboard, more front-end customization options are now available.
It reimagines dashboard elements as “Blocks” that can be freely arranged on a canvas. This enables Michael and his team to create custom layouts, place relevant filters next to charts, add explanatory text, and break free from the rigid structures of traditional dashboards. The team can also customize branding through custom themes, allowing StrongMind to standardize the look and feel of dashboards across both internal and external reports.
We’ve been chunking out special headers or situations where we want a chart to be different. We’ve been standardizing those into a single theme so we can just reuse it and call it.
– Michael K., Head of Enterprise Analytics
Holistics’ programmatic approach also enables StrongMind to implement granular governance at the dashboard level. With detailed backup and restore capabilities similar to those in standard DevOps tools, StrongMind no longer has to rely on the limited options of traditional BI tools, which often lack detailed backup for dashboard configurations.
We need governance for the dashboards as well, because if somebody screws up my dashboard, I’m out of luck.
The benefit of Holistics governance setup is if something breaks, or if somebody screws this up, I have a backup. So if my guy goes in there and screws something up, I can undo it.
– Michael K., Head of Enterprise Analytics
Holistics’ backup and restore functionalities ensure that even if configurations are unintentionally changed, there’s a safety net. This granular governance allows StrongMind’s data team to confidently manage extensive, complex dashboards, even when frequent adjustments are necessary.
As Michael noted, “Many BI tools don’t allow the visual configurations of dashboards to be backed up in as detailed a manner as Holistics, so having this was an assurance.”
Today, Strongmind couldn’t be happier with Holistics.The platform has become a cornerstone of their data workflow, continuously adapting to meet their evolving needs. As Michael puts it, “Very satisfied, seeing how the product grows”. He also appreciates the constant stream of innovative features, noting, “I constantly sign up with your new beta because you released a lot of cool things”.
I don’t have any complaints. I recommend you to folks at data conferences all the time. If they’re looking for a BI tool, I’d go tell them - check out Holistics.
– Michael K., Head of Enterprise Analytics
Canvas Dashboard, in particular, has become a favorite for the team, tremendously elevating their experience with Holistics.
Canvas dashboards have opened up a whole new level of flexibility for us, letting us visualize and organize our data just the way we need. It’s clear there’s always room to improve, but overall, Canvas has been an incredibly powerful addition to our toolkit. I’m loving Canvas!
– Michael K., Head of Enterprise Analytics