As institutional research and data teams scale to meet increasing reporting needs, ensuring visual and analytical consistency becomes important. Without deliberate standardization, reports developed by multiple team members often differ in layout, naming conventions, and design - leading to confusion, misinterpretation, and diminished stakeholder trust. In this presentation we 1) share strategies for centralizing data transformation logic using a dataflow so that all report builders work from a common, governed data layer and 2) present a template-based design framework called SLAB (Scope, Layout, Aesthetics, Build), which provides reusable, standardized dashboard structures applicable across an entire reporting portfolio. Together, these approaches reduce development time, minimize inconsistency, and produce polished data products that stakeholders can more readily interpret and trust. While grounded in Power BI, the concepts are transferable to any BI platform.
