Data is truly the backbone of any successful business strategy. After all “data is the new oil”.
Data insights can tell a real-time story about your business, its operations and your customers. Utilising this information effectively can help empower your business to make better decisions.
However, raw data is difficult to understand. That’s why data visualisation is so important. This vital business application presents key info and analytics in an easily digestible visualisation.
Microsoft is leading the charge in this sector with Power BI. In fact, it’s the most popular data analytics platform.
What is Power BI? How can businesses use Power BI to make better decisions? What are the top benefits of this platform?
In this article, we’ll give you a complete guide on why your business will benefit from data visualisation through Microsoft’s Power BI.
What is Microsoft Power BI?
Microsoft Power BI is a powerful data analysis and visualisation tool that transforms information & data into immersive & interactive insights. This brilliant tool allows businesses to benefit from stunning self-service analytics.
Power BI allows you to make more informed business decisions without the added cost of hiring data analysts or designers.
What sets Power BI apart from the other data analytics platforms out there? With a clean Microsoft Office-style interface, Power BI is intuitive and easy to use.
Consumer goods behemoth Procter and Gamble (P&G) found that Power BI helped them push the envelope and innovate — stating that it allows them to “constructively disrupt how [P&G] operates, leading to growth.” Using this data has helped them improve their supply chain and find solutions to product performance.
In the telecommunications industry, T-Mobile used Power BI to help improve its data reporting accuracy and to be able to help guide employees to success with real-time sales results.
Top 7 Power BI Benefits
So, what is so special about Power BI? Why are key players in their respective industries turning to Microsoft for a data analysis solution?
Let’s discuss some of the platform’s top features and benefits!
Broad Feature Set
Power BI is feature-rich, with tons of tools that are incredibly useful in day-to-day use.
Versatile Visualisations: Being able to display data in a way that’s easy to understand is key to being able to actively use that data. Power BI has many ways to visualise data attractively, from line graphs and pie charts to maps.
Top-Tier Customisation: Power BI is completely modular, with the ability to change and customise your dashboard however you need using ‘tiles’. You can also use it to create reports and can design them exactly how you want.
DAX: Data Analysis Expressions (DAX) are key to Power BI. With a library of hundreds of functions, it’s easy to be able to find the perfect predefined codes to handle your data needs.
With all of these and more, it’s easy to see why Power BI is so popular. It just has so many convenient features and functions that other data analytics tools can’t match.
Drag and Drop Functionality
Data visualisation is all about making things easier, and Microsoft meets the mark in that regard.
You can easily drag and drop elements into your workspace and adjust them however you’d like, without having to worry about creating new elements and editing them in an external menu.
Available on All Devices
Power BI is available on all devices, meaning you can easily access your data both on the go and on other devices if need be.
Rather than being tied down to a single computer and workspace, this versatility is great for the modern company, with remote working becoming the norm.
Better Insights
Insights are the best way to be able to improve your organisation’s success. They let you see the most important parts of your data, and where things need to be adjusted.
Power BI provides top-tier insights, by looking through your data to find trends and patterns. You can even design and generate paginated reports to print out and share with key stakeholders.
Constant Data Refresh
Power BI uses a constant data refresh system to ensure your information and insights are up-to-date and current.
This near real-time allows you to track how your metrics and insights change over time as inputs shift. This feature ensures you’re always acting on accurate data and making informed decisions.
Discover Actionable Insights
Power BI turns your data into actionable insights and easily enables you to get started on unleashing your company’s full potential. You can easily discover trends, strengths and weaknesses in your business.
This tool integrates with the rest of Microsoft’s Power Platform to make it easy to turn these insights into action. With Power Apps and Power Automate, you can easily build applications and automate workflows based on guidance provided by BI.
Make Use of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning
Power BI’s integration with machine learning and artificial intelligence helps it truly stand out amongst the rest.
By using AutoML (Automated Machine Learning), you can train a model within Power BI on your data and apply that model to any future data, allowing for high-quality predictive insights.
Use Power BI to Improve your Business’s Data Analysis
Power BI is easily the most powerful data analysis and visualisation tool on the market. With AI integration and intelligent insights, Power BI truly is the data solution of the future. Its simplicity is unmatched, and it’s also highly customisable and powerful.
Are you interested in turning your data into success? Do you want to access the world of machine learning and artificial intelligence to improve your business?
Why not get started with Power BI today?
With complete Microsoft 365 integration, any company familiar with Microsoft’s services will find it easy to get started. And, it's extremely intuitive and simple user interface is hard not to fall in love with.
Blue Car Technologies’ BI Datahub provides the seamless integration between Microsoft Power BI and your other mission critical applications such as iManage Work, connecting you directly to your data, uncovering predictive patterns, associations and trends across your organisation.
If you want to find out more about how your business could benefit from Power BI and our Power BI and iManage integration, contact us today.