From Complexity to Clarity: Visualization at the Heart of Product Excellence

In this edition of Meet the Expert, we feature Kavita Behera, Senior Product Manager at Lumel whose work focuses on transforming complex business data into clear, actionable insights. Specializing in Power BI and custom visuals, she builds intuitive solutions that help organizations extract greater value from their analytics environments.
 
With experience across research, design, finance, and marketing functions, Kavita brings a multidisciplinary perspective to product strategy. She works closely with cross-functional teams to deliver visualization-led solutions aligned with measurable business outcomes.
 
Her approach combines design thinking with strong product leadership ensuring that data platforms are not only functional, but practical, scalable, and decision-focused.

1.Your career sits at the intersection of product management and data visualization. How do these two disciplines influence each other in your work?

I think both disciplines are ultimately about decision-making.

Product management, for me, starts with structure, clear thinking, and prioritization. It’s the world of clean tables, roadmaps, checklists, and yes, the occasional Gantt chart keeping everyone honest. Data visualization is the ability to imagine how information will be consumed before it’s even built.

When you see them together, they are about communicating solution with right visual aid.

2.You have and are leading teams building custom visuals that people genuinely enjoy using. From a product perspective, what makes a data visualization lovable—not just usable?

When my team and I build custom visuals, we start by thinking like users before we think like product managers. I always ask myself: If I were using this on a busy workday, what would make my life easier?

The reality of BI tools is that they’re built for business users. This isn’t a hobby product; people rely on these tools to get real work done. Many times, they don't have the choice.

But the real win is when usage turns into choice. When a user opens a visual and thinks, “Oh wow, that was easier than I expected.”

That small “aha” moment is what I aim for. And you know what, our products are full of such "aha" moments.

3.As a Product Manager, how do you balance business requirements with design integrity when building BI solutions?

I don't see business requirement and design integrity as opposite forces. When we are building solution they actually work in same direction making our product stronger.

The key rule with product design is consistency. If we tap into common user adoption and pattern than any business requirement can be met.

4.Power BI is often seen as a “reporting tool,” yet your work pushes it into storytelling and product-grade experiences. What’s possible when teams rethink how BI tools are used?

I recently spoke about this in a webinar called “How Leading Teams Go Beyond Native Power BI” where I discussed how BI has evolved from static reports and spreadsheets into more story-driven experiences.
 
When many teams first adopted Power BI, they were mainly looking to replace pivot tables. Over time, as Power BI matured into a leading BI platform, expectations shifted. Users began asking for more features.
 
When teams rethink BI this way, Power BI stops being just a reporting tool and becomes a platform for decision-making. Inforiver bridged the gap by supporting smoother migration into the Microsoft ecosystem.

5.Looking ahead, what skills do you think data visualization professionals need to develop to stay relevant in the next few years?

In BI, dashboard and storytelling are no longer new skills. Every team has one every review starts with them.

What’s coming next is embedded analytics and AI experiences. Teams want flexibility to integrate insights directly into their internal tools and platforms.

At the same time, AI is changing how people consume information across industries. BI will follow that shift, but more cautiously. Unlike creative fields, BI teams work with sensitive, high-stakes data, so adoption will be slower and more intentional.

That’s where the next phase of BI is headed.

6.What’s a product decision you’ve made that significantly improved how users interact with data?

One impactful product decision was building Smart BI.

With Inforiver Analytics+, we focused on reducing the effort it takes for users to create a visual. The product can recommend charts, automatically calculate variances, and let users save, and repurpose their work with import and export options.

Instead of expecting users to spend hours getting best practices like IBCS right, we introduced single-click presets.

The key decision was prioritizing flexibility without workarounds. By giving users smart defaults and easy control, we significantly improved how quickly they could move from other legacy tools to Power BI.

7.What’s one chart or visualization you’ve created/ used that changed how people understood a problem?

One such visualization was Inforiver Analytics+ Multi-axis chart. On the surface, it looks like an upgraded combo chart. In practice, it replaces the need for multiple visuals. You can build stacked + grouped + line chart, grouped lollipop charts, and several other variations without rebuilding logic. It supports up to 5 axes, more than 10+ data series.

The real impact was clarity. Teams could see patterns and trade-offs immediately, and yes, people genuinely find it cool once they realize how much it simplifies their work.