2025 Network Awards – Professional Management
What the judges said
The team led the design and implementation of a suite of Power BI dashboards integrated into the newly launched Business School Strategy Portal. This innovative solution empowers managers with real-time oversight of strategic initiatives — enabling progress tracking, risk management, and performance measurement. By establishing a single source of truth and embedding live reporting into governance cycles, the initiative significantly reduces reliance on lengthy static reports. It promotes a more agile, scalable, and sustainable approach to strategic management. The panel commended the project’s forward-thinking design, highlighting its potential for broader application and its clear benefits in driving efficiency and saving time.
About the project
To promote transparency, accountability, and data-driven decision making in implementing the University of Sydney Business School 2023-27 Strategy, the team spearheaded the development of a suite of Power BI dashboards to feed into the newly created Business School Strategy Portal.
The Strategy Portal serves as the tool to showcase the progress and impact of 14 strategic initiatives supporting the 2023-27 Strategy. It includes 14 initiative-level Power BI dashboards feeding into a comprehensive program-level Power BI report. These dashboards allow staff to drill down into specific projects and record milestones and measures throughout the strategy’s duration.
The Strategy Portal is made up of two parts:
- Tracking progress. This includes monitoring the status of the 14 initiatives and drilling down to track the status and implementation stage of up to 100 projects within the 2023-27 Strategy. Red–Amber–Green signals focus attention on at-risk items; managers can drill down to root causes and intervene efficiently. Microsoft Lists prompts capture team updates and comments, creating an auditable trail.
- Measuring achievements. About 200 milestones and metrics are tracked year-on-year with trends and targets.
This is a transformative way of working, enabling decision makers to manage by exception while maintaining clear targets and line-of-sight to the work driving them. Staff access consistent, role-appropriate, live views in a digestible format, replacing fragmented spreadsheets and slide packs and improving professional management across the business school.
