The era of digitalisation has brought an increasing amount of information to companies, whether it be data relating to customers, employees or suppliers. Today, companies need answers faster and more efficiently, so it is essential to have tools that allow them to make more assertive decisions and, consequently, improve business management. And that's how Power BI can help in data access, being another Business Intelligence (BI) tool. Microsoft Power BI is Microsoft's Business Intelligence tool. Power BI it's a collection of software services, applications and connectors that work together to transform unrelated data sources into coherent, visually engaging and interactive information. The data can be an Excel spreadsheet or a collection of hybrid data warehouses on-premises and based on the cloud. It allows data sources to be easier to view and discover what is important, as well as share its contents with anyone. In other words, it allows to consolidate, make coherent and visual the information found in different sources, from a simple Microsoft Excel workbook to files located in the cloud.
Power BI has gained interest, because it allows users to use reporting tools, regardless of their technical background. As a business analytics service, it provides a data view to support the user in making quick and well-informed decisions, by enabling data to be transformed into insights and thus creating a more complete scenario for analysing and deciding.
Power BI has graphic components that enable the user to easily and quickly create dashboards, playing an important role when making decisions. Another important aspect has to do with the fact that it is composed of a free tool, the Power BI Desktop, which allows the connection, transformation, visualisation and analysis of data. This connection can be made from multiple sources, allowing it to be combined into a single data model that meets the analytical needs of the user. Also, it allows the connection of different types of data sources, Excel sheets, web pages and any other type of database.
Power BI consists of several elements that work together on these three basic platforms:
In an application for Windows computers, called Power BI Desktop.
In an online SaaS (Software as a Service) service called the Power BI service.
In Power BI mobile applications for Windows, iOS and Android devices.
In this way, it is possible to create, share and analyse the necessary information in the way that is most pleasant to the user.
The application of this tool has an important impact on the day-to-day life of companies, among other aspects:
Dashboard for interaction and with numerous interactive visualisation possibilities;
360º view of the data, thanks to interactive dashboards that make it possible to provide aggregated information regardless of where it resides, on-premises or cloud and in real-time;
Self-service analysis to build reports with drag-and-drop in a fully graphical environment;
Power BI can be integrated with the existing data platform (eg Microsoft Azure, Excel or any Cloud service), and thus update the company's data automatically;
Access from anywhere with the Power BI mobile applications, which update automatically with any change in data, making it possible to create a report or a dashboard on the computer, smartphone or tablet.
Power BI is very cheap or even free
There are Power BI communities, where anyone can register, create a topic and/or vote on an existing topic by asking questions
Reports created in Power BI can be exported, which makes it a lot easier if you like using this tool for presentations at meetings or similar events
With Power BI you can connect to a web page through your access link, import the tabulated data and create indicators showing the data in a much more practical way.
With this in mind, many companies use PowerBI as a tool for analysing the data obtained, so that in the end, they can have great assertiveness in their decisions. PowerBI is like a guide for making assertive decisions based on data, and it is easy to understand why more and more companies are using this software.
Create a data-based culture with business intelligence for everyone, and let anyone at any level in your organisation make decisions with confidence through up-to-the-minute analysis.
Need help to turn data into opportunity with Microsoft Power BI data visualisation tools? Contact us and drive better business decisions by analysing your business data for insights.