Power BI is Microsoft’s cloud-based Business Intelligence service that gives you the ability to convert data into easily understandable visuals. With Power BI, all authorized users can access reports anytime, anywhere with all types of devices allowing you monitor your data in real time.
The definition of Power BI
Power BI was derived from Business Intelligence (BI). Majority of forward-thinking and profitable organisations now use Artificial Intelligence to assist them in making better decisions. As a financial professional, you most likely have experienced the confusion of having to make key decisions based on a large volume of data. It could be overwhelming and the inability to see the ‘big picture’ could hinder you from gaining the much-needed insight to guide you to the best outcome.
With Power BI, you can examine each element to drive better decisions using the dashboard’s visual representation; allowing users quickly see and make sense of relevant data based on factual information.
Benefits of Power BI
- Increase your company’s productivity: Business Intelligence is a power tool that pulls all the company’s data from all departments and puts in it one location, modelling it to create a decision support tool. This can be achieved in 4 stages:
a. Gathering information to centralise database results
b. Integration which brings structure to the data aggregate
c. Reporting – easy to understand view to users with access rights to the information
d. The return – outlines the information to make it understandable and easy to share
The beauty of Power BI is that you can seamlessly automate all these four stages, taking the data where it needs to go regardless of its source. Which in turn means all facets within your organisation can process data relevant to them that is understandable and reliable to render easier and faster decisions making, improving your company’s productivity.
- User-friendly dashboard and data analysis
Power BI is loved for its simplicity. No prior knowledge of programming language is required. Accessing information with only a few clicks with the ability to tailor the analysis of the results to the specific needs related to the user is a major benefit of Powe BI. You don’t have to dissect raw data because…ta da! Power BI has already done this for you! You can customise your dashboard to allow see data that Is relevant to you right away. Power BI can also serve as a collaborative tool allowing teams work on the same reports at the same time.
- Unparalleled Excel Integration
With a lot of organisations still heavily reliant on Excel for their reporting and analytics, Power BI gives you the ability to gather and share business datasets from Excel without needing to learn a new application or language. Excel and Power BI work well together to simplify enterprise data analysis.
- Easy to connect your data together
Power BI supports up to 70+ connectors letting organisations load data from a wide range of highly used sources into one place for greater visibility and accessibility. With these in-built connectors, you can load pre-built Power BI dashboards in seconds and get powerful data analysis within a few minutes.
The drag-and-drop interface also means no coding is required or copy and paste anything to get begin, and Power BI can merge multiple files (such as Excel spreadsheets) and let you analyse the combined data in one report.
- Next level predictive analysis
Power BI’s advanced data modelling tool makes it possible to forecast trends and predict future outcomes accurately. The analysing and forecasting tools in Power BI allows you run various ‘what if’ scenarios such as financial forecasts or industry specific growth market and helps you come up with the solutions that best suits your organisation. It does this by analysing past historical data using statistical algorithms to get probable results and projects them with a graphical visualisation.
- Natural language query engine
Power BI incorporates natural language search interfaces to allow users gain insights using natural language. For example, you can type a question like “what were my sales for Birmingham in the first quarter” and Power BI will give you results in the form of chart or table visualisations that best represent the data you are looking for. It is as simple as that! Power BI’s query engine is very intuitive and works very well without the need to code or syntax. The mobile Power BI applications also now support voice recognition Q&A, so you can now ask for information on the move.
Conclusion
In an era of digital transformation, data plays a key role in shaping the future of your organisation. Power BI gives you actionable and valuable insights to help you achieve more and take your organisation to greater heights. Integrating Power BI with your EPM is a game changer, providing you with powerful planning and budgeting functionalities directly in Power BI. If you have questions about the possibility of integrating our EPM software solutions with Power BI in your company, we will be happy to advise you. Contact us today for more information.
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