Digital transformation has allowed businesses to gather data on almost every imaginable process, strategy, and interaction. This has resulted in an unprecedented amount of data access for businesses, with a projected daily global data generation of 463 exabytes by 2025.
However, just collecting this data is only part of the story. To achieve successful outcomes, businesses must turn raw data into actionable insights. Those who can do this successfully gain a significant competitive advantage.
Why? Because businesses driven by data are more likely to:
- Get new customers
- Keep their existing customers
- Stay profitable in the long run
There are many techniques to analyze data and uncover valuable insights, but they all require the right tools. Advanced data analytics platforms simplify and automate the complicated processes of collecting, managing, analyzing, and visualizing data.
While there are various options available like Tableau, Qlik Sense, and Looker, in this article, we’ll focus on one of the most popular and powerful platforms – Microsoft Power BI.
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What is Power BI?
Developed by Microsoft and introduced as an independent product in July 2015, Power BI stands out as a robust data analytics and visualization platform designed to streamline data management through a modern and user-friendly dashboard interface.
The acronym ‘BI’ in Power BI stands for Business Intelligence, encompassing the range of strategies, processes, and technologies organizations employ to facilitate data-driven decision-making.
Power BI serves as a bridge between data and decision-making for businesses by effectively converting raw data from diverse sources into impactful insights. These insights are then presented in a visually clear, graphical format through the dashboard, making them actionable for users.
Since its debut, Power BI has consistently held a prominent position in the realm of business analytics and intelligence, earning its reputation as the preferred tool for leading organizations worldwide.
Now that we have an overview of Power BI, let’s delve into the significant advantages it brings to businesses.
Simplicity for Everyone:
Power BI stands out for its simplicity, making it super easy for users. The intricate processes of collecting and analyzing data happen behind the scenes, and what users get is a final result—insights that are clear, easy to grasp, and directly relevant.
With its user-friendly interface, anyone in the organization can effortlessly create BI reports and dashboards from various data sources. This straightforward approach means that Power BI isn’t just for data experts; it’s for everyone in the organization to benefit from data analytics.
Efficient Templates for Quick Work:
Power BI makes it simple for users to create and utilize different reporting templates. Once made, these templates can be saved and used by different teams and departments throughout an organization.
This serves to:
- Make processes smoother
- Greatly cut down the time and energy needed for reporting
- Build internal efficiencies
Security for Your Data:
In handling and managing data, keeping things secure is a big deal for any responsible business. Power BI takes security seriously and provides strong features to keep your data safe:
- Your data is locked up tight with double encryption from start to finish, so sharing analytics insights is a worry-free experience.
- It keeps an eye out for any suspicious patterns in how the data is being handled.
- There are strict permissions in place to lower the risk of unwanted access.
- Your data stays protected even when it’s exported, thanks to sensitivity labels.
- Compliance measures are built-in, tailoring security to specific countries and industries.
- Using Azure services ensures that your data isn’t exposed to the public internet.
- Row-level security (RLS) means certain people can only see specific data points—for instance, a sales manager sees only their team’s sales.
- Object-level security (OLS) lets you show or hide items, like sales targets, based on a user’s role permissions.
Frequent Updates:
Microsoft regularly updates the Power BI platform, typically every month. These updates make sure that Power BI desktop stays at the forefront in terms of features and user-friendliness.
Moreover, Microsoft actively listens to its users’ feedback and often adds new features based on the suggestions they receive. This means that what users ask for often becomes part of the platform’s new and improved functionality.
Affordable Solutions:
If you’re already using Microsoft Enterprise Agreement, you get Power BI included with your subscription at no extra charge. If not, the cost depends on the plan you pick:
- Pro
- Premium Per User
- Premium Per Capacity
With Power BI, there’s no need for upfront licensing fees or hiring technical experts. It’s user-friendly, designed for citizen development, enabling you to create your own data sets, reports, and connectors tailored to your needs. This can ultimately pinpoint ways to cut down on risks and long-term costs.
Easy Connection with Excel:
Because Power BI is from Microsoft, it effortlessly works with other Microsoft tools. A particularly handy integration is with Excel. With this, users can link Excel reports, data models, and queries directly to Power BI dashboards. This makes it quick and easy to gather and share Excel data in fresh ways.
Additionally, the data that users have already made visual in Power BI can be smoothly exported to an Excel spreadsheet. This makes analysis straightforward and simple for the end user.
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Instant Insights:
Since collecting data is an ongoing thing, the best platforms for analyzing data are always active. Power BI gives you real-time analytics, meaning insights get updated regularly based on your license level.
For instance, with Power BI Pro, you can refresh your data up to eight times a day. If you’re using Power BI Premium, you can do it a whopping 48 times a day.
Create Your Own Dashboards:
Power BI is super flexible, letting users create dashboards with visuals that suit their specific needs. And the best part? It’s really quick and easy thanks to Power BI’s drag-and-drop feature.
Users can also dig deeper into the visuals, getting insights at a more detailed level.
Easy Data Connection:
A crucial part of any smart business tool is how well it works with other data sources. Power BI scores big here as it lets you link up with a wide variety of sources and bring in important business data like:
- Sales data saved in your CRM
- Financial data from your ERP
And that’s not all. Power BI also hooks up with many third-party solutions and software, including:
- Google Analytics
- Salesforce
- Spark
- Zendesk
- Marketo
Users can even connect data files, like XML and JSON, and SQL server databases. This means you can create fresh and interesting data sets from lots of different places. These sets can then be used for analysis and reporting.
Ask and Get Answers Easily:
Power BI has a cool feature called Q&A, where users can type a question about their data into a search box and instantly get answers. For instance, someone might ask:
“Which of our products sold the most units in Q1 of this year?”
And just like that, Power BI looks through the data and gives smart, up-to-date answers. This feature is extra helpful because it can also guess what data sets and categories users might be interested in, making it even easier to get the info you need.
Lastly, Power BI is known for showing data insights in a way that’s easy to understand and act on.
Think of it like this – visualizing data isn’t just about nice-looking charts. It’s like the last part of the puzzle that helps users get what’s going on in the data and make decisions. Power BI does this in a cool way with different options like:
- Pie charts
- Column charts
- Stacked column charts
- Tables
- Lists
- Area charts
- Scatter charts
- Geo maps
- Line charts
So, you get to see and understand your data in all kinds of cool ways!
Every smart business aims to be more data-driven, and Power BI stands out as one of the best tools to make that happen. But, without the right know-how, businesses might only scratch the surface of what Power BI can do.
That’s where teaming up with experts comes in. It’s often the smartest and most affordable way to make the most of tools like Power BI, ensuring you get the best bang for your buck.
Here at Webtual, we’ve got a top-notch team of Power BI consultants ready to help your business use data like a pro. Whether you want a whole team or just some extra support for your in-house IT crew, we offer top-notch expertise at a great cost.
If you want to learn more about how Webtual can help your business make the most of Power BI for smarter decisions, get in touch with us today.