Migrate to Data Studio without losing the numbers people trust

Why do companies migrate to Data Studio?

Usually for cost, sharing or reach. Data Studio is free to build and view, and Data Studio Pro costs $9 per user per project per month for creators only, because viewers need no licence. For a company where fifty people read reports and five build them, that changes the licence bill considerably.

Sharing is the other reason. Data Studio reports open in a browser with a Google account, connect natively to GA4, Google Ads, Search Console, Sheets and BigQuery, and can be sent by scheduled email. Teams already working in Google Workspace and Google Cloud find that their reporting fits where the rest of their work already lives.

How do you move from Excel and Sheets decks?

We automate the monthly assembly first, then build the dashboard on the result. Most spreadsheet reporting is a routine: download files, paste them into tabs, fix formats, update formulas, copy charts into slides.

We replace each step. Files land in Google Drive, are mapped into a central structured sheet or BigQuery table, and business rules are applied automatically. For an Australian insurance brokerage receiving messy .xls files from several insurers, this cut report time from 4 to 5 hours to under 5 minutes and lifted reporting accuracy from about 75% to 99%, with real-time visibility across insurers through filters.

What changes when you migrate from Power BI or Tableau?

The data model has to move out of the BI tool, because Data Studio does not hold one. Power BI datasets with DAX measures and Tableau extracts with calculated fields carry logic that Data Studio expects to find in the source.

So we rebuild that logic in BigQuery views or tables, or in a structured sheet for smaller cases, then recreate the reports on top. Some things translate directly, such as filters, scorecards, time series and pivot tables. Others need redesign: complex cross-table measures become pre-calculated columns, and row-level security becomes viewer's credentials on BigQuery with row rules. We map each report and flag what will look or behave differently before work starts.

How do you move personal reports into company-owned workspaces?

We move them into Data Studio Pro team workspaces so they belong to the company, not to whoever built them. In the free edition, every report and data source is owned by an individual Google account, and when that person leaves, reports and credentials can break.

Pro ties content to a Google Cloud project with IAM, and team workspaces have Manager, Content Manager and Contributor roles. We inventory reports across the people who built them, agree a workspace structure by team or function, transfer ownership, reset data source credentials to service or shared accounts, and update schedules. Reports built under the old Looker Studio name already moved to Data Studio automatically in April 2026, so the work here is ownership and structure, not conversion.

When should you not migrate to Data Studio?

When the current tool does something your business depends on that Data Studio is not designed for. We would rather lose a project than move a team backwards.

Signs that staying put, or choosing a different tool, is the better answer:

• You need a governed semantic layer across many teams; that is what Looker, a separate enterprise BI product, is for.
• Your Power BI model holds hundreds of interdependent DAX measures and the team maintaining it is happy.
• Your spreadsheet is really a planning model with what-if inputs, not a report.
• Your company runs on Microsoft 365 and Azure with no Google footprint.
• Reports are rarely used and cost little: retiring them may beat moving them.

How do you make sure nothing is lost in migration?

We reconcile before we switch. For each migrated report, we pick the key numbers, run old and new side by side for at least one closed period, and explain every difference before users move.

We also run old and new in parallel for a short period, so people can compare and raise questions while the old report is still available. Only after sign-off do we retire the original, archive it and redirect users. Documentation records where each old metric now lives and how it is calculated.

Which reports should be migrated first?

Start with the reports people open every week and that cost the most effort to produce. Those deliver value fastest and build confidence in the new setup.

In practice that is often the monthly management pack, the marketing performance report and one operational dashboard. Reports used once a quarter, or by one person, come later or are merged into others. During the inventory we look at view history where the old tool provides it, ask owners which reports they would miss, and sort everything into three groups: migrate now, merge into another report, or retire. In most inventories, the retire group is larger than people expect, which shortens the project.