As businesses expand, it becomes increasingly challenging to manage the regular flow of data generated. This consequently creates a roadblock in the way data-driven companies try to use their data to make strategic business decisions. Furthermore, the siloing effect and biased reporting systems across companies leave key decision makers in a position to create business plans with partially accurate data. Due to this, business intelligence systems are being widely adopted.
What is Power BI?
Microsoft Power BI (Business Intelligence) is a powerful analytics tool that supports data extraction, data analysis, and data visualization regardless of the size of a company. It offers a service that enables your employees to generate an intuitive, simple visual representation of the processed data. With the help of this technology, businesses can keep a closer eye on their operations and receive quick responses using extensive dashboards that are accessible on all devices.
Power BI is a cloud-based solution that requires no infrastructure support or capital investment. The tool’s modern iteration is free from legacy software, and its users don’t require any particular training to create business intelligence insights. The Microsoft Power BI implementation is simple and quick, like all other Microsoft cloud services.
Microsoft Power BI includes multiple tools:
- Power Query to extract, process and transform the data.
- Power Pivot to perform data analysis and create data models.
- Power View and Map to create interactive charts, graphs, maps, and other visuals.
Then there are other tools, like:
- Power BI Report Server – An on-premise report server where you can store the reports you’ve made with Power BI Desktop or Pro.
- Power BI Mobile – Utilize mobile apps for iOS, Android, and Windows phones to gain access on the go.
- Power BI Embedded – This helps developers to incorporate Power BI reports and dashboards into other apps.
Why do companies prefer Power BI?
There are numerous benefits of using Microsoft Power BI, and it helps management teams make quick decisions without compromising the company’s profitability. Power BI makes data visualization simple by providing a complete summary of corporate data in a visual format with presentation options including tables, charts, gauges, and maps, making it easier for teams to utilize. Power BI is a strong decision support tool that distinguishes between a regular business and an effective, agile, and flexible organization.
Who uses Power BI?
Power BI is generally used by internal business intelligence practitioners for creating data models and reporting. Businesses that are ready to invest in strengthening their data insights would find Power BI appropriate due to its flexibility.
Data analysts use it to build dashboards and visualizations for their reports and projects. The user of Power BI Dashboards can forecast when the business will achieve certain goals.
The company’s administrators and managers, as well as other Power BI users, have access to this information, giving leadership a better understanding of how the various departments are performing. The operations, IT, marketing, sales, human resources, and finance departments frequently use this tool.
Business benefits of Microsoft Power BI
1. Data Visualization
Power BI is a tool that makes it simple to create reports, dashboards, and interactive visualizations with a variety of charts, including bar, line, and pie charts. Anyone can easily design appealing visuals with the use of this tool, which can then be included in websites, mobile applications, and other platforms.
2. Dataset Filtration
You can easily convert your dataset into a format that can be used by others with the help of the data cleansing feature. Users can choose which columns to include in their datasets and how they want them to appear on the chart using this feature. Before proceeding, it is best to filter away unnecessary variables when working with large datasets from numerous sources, because doing so will make the visualizations much more accurate and effective.
3. Ease of Use
Power BI’s ease of use is one of its main advantages. This helps organizations to acquire insightful data without having to possess any specialized knowledge or skills. With drag-and-drop features, Power BI users can quickly and easily generate reports and dashboards from a variety of data sources. The Q&A function also allows users to post queries like, “What was the overall volume of sales in a particular year?” In response to the query, Power BI will then show a graph or chart to visualize the data.
Users of Power BI can analyze and visualize data from multiple data sets to generate a clear picture of a company’s present state and any recurring trends. Businesses can develop predicted insights by using this data in a clear visual way. These insights give companies a better understanding of their strengths and potential weaknesses. Employees can be empowered to take timely, data-driven decisions to support strategic activities by converting these insights into actions.
4. Multiple Data Sources
Multiple data sources are supported, including financial data from ERP and sales data collected in CRM. You can utilize Power BI to access on-premise, Azure Cloud, and outside data sources through a single, user-friendly application. This enables you to combine various dissimilar data sources to produce new and interesting datasets. Despite the potential for widespread connectivity, Power BI offers security features that are always updated and compliant with global security standards.
5. Affordable and Cost-effective
Power BI is reasonably priced and accessible for small and mid-sized companies when compared to similar business intelligence and analytics tools. Additionally, it offers a variety of versions so that you can choose the one best suited to your company. For example, Power BI Pro is a great option for small and mid-sized businesses, and you can access a wide range of tools for as little as $9.99 or C$12.80 per user every month. Power BI Desktop, which is a free download, may also be used to create reports and dashboards on your computer.
Conclusion
Power BI’s ever-expanding toolkit has the capacity to provide dashboard-style reports with real-time, compelling, and actionable insights from data. If your company requires reporting and analytical capabilities that go beyond Excel, Microsoft Power BI can be the appropriate choice for your company. You can quickly visualize and analyze data across your whole company with Power BI, comprehensively understanding your operations and performance.
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