With the rate of competition and how fast things change in the realm of business, it’s no wonder that companies are needing strategies on how to make their decisions more effectively and reach their business goals faster. The concept of business intelligence has been a concept that’s becoming more popular because it is meant for managers, top executives, and business unit heads to craft better-informed decisions with precise data.
In order to achieve this, Microsoft introduced Power BI, a business intelligence tool that allows you to transform your data into measurable actions.

What is Power BI?

Power BI is an assemblage of apps and connectors, and software services that transforms unrelated data sources into visually immersive, coherent, and interactive insights. Businesses utilize Power BI to gain valuable perceptions into their internal data. With that, they can get a better gauge of external factors like analyzing your competitors.
There are three types of Power BI, each of which offers something that would certainly suit your organization:

Power BI Desktop

This free application can be installed on your computer to provide a complete data analysis and reports creation tool. This is utilized by many in creating reports and sharing them with other Power BI Service users.

Power BI Pro

Power BI Pro is a cloud-based self-service analytics tool that lets you create reports and dashboards and integrate them into apps, link them to other Microsoft solutions, and share them with other users. It is a paid version.

Power BI Premium

Premium is best for large organizations. In this version, you will receive a larger data capacity limit, APO surface access, max performance, and many other features.

5 Reasons to Use Power BI

Power BI integration may be the best thing that you can do for your business. It’s quite easy to use (unsurprising for Microsoft), so anyone, even those that are not well-adapted to technology, can create interactive reports that can make an impact.
1. Power BI empowers your employees.
One of Power BI’s best assets is that it harnesses a data-driven culture, the mindset wherein decisions are made not with emotions, but with data. This can be done by putting business intelligence assets such as dashboards and real-time reports into the hands of the employees. Because of this, your employees also wouldn’t be needing a technical or IT team, making it a true self-service business intelligence platform!
2. Power BI brings value to your data.
Data only becomes useful when it gives important business insights and speaks stories that help decision-makers craft better decisions. Power BI offers interactivity as users can link their data to Power BI and select from a myriad of visualization options (heat maps, scatter plots, column charts, pie charts, etc.).

Power BI has a drag-and-drop functionality to help visualize your data and have clean, insightful, and well-organized dashboards and reports. These visualizations are updated in seconds so results are as accurate as they can be.
3. Power BI is great for sharing content.
A Power BI integration benefit that you can reap is that you can share reports and dashboards so the entire department and organization can collaborate seamlessly. Employees can work together in an environment, collaborate in Teams, disseminate reports or dashboards, annotate and share from the Power BI mobile apps, share insights, and embed reports in public websites and secure portals.
4. Power BI has AI capabilities.
The business analytic solution possesses capabilities that help users gain more value out of their reporting and data. Three AI visualizations are available for developers so that they can investigate their data in a silver lens, produce insights, and discover trends that may be not easily detected immediately.
5. Power BI supports a broad range of data sources.
Power BI allows you to do data importation from a wide range of sources. It also integrates with all Microsoft products like Dynamics 365, Azure, etc. What’s also worth noting is that it offers Excel integration which can be useful for many. Queries, data models, and reports can be seamlessly linked to Power BI dashboards. This way, your employees need not be IT specialists to create interactive visualizations as data can be easily created and presented to you as you open your dashboard.

Power BI Features and Benefits

Data Visualization

Creating powerful reports has never been easier because of the data visualization feature of Power BI. Through this, it will be easier for you to embed charts or graphs to easily illustrate the data that you have. These visualizations can also be placed on different platforms such as mobile apps, websites, etc.

Refresh

This feature automatically updates your datasets, so there is no need to assign anyone to perform it manually. With this, you can access the latest information while saving valuable time and resources. Once the update is available, Power BI will notify the users given permission to access and provide information on how many days it will be available before being refreshed.

Dataset Filtration

True to its easy-to-navigate trait, Power BI lets you transform your dataset into a useable form. Users can organize everything by selecting which to display or how they should be presented. This can be useful also for those dealing with big datasets as irrelevant information can be filtered out.

Get Data

This feature allows you to make reports without getting a third-party tool or writing queries. Assets are updated automatically as well. Users can easily connect their company’s sources of information such as Azure, Oracle, and SQL databases.

Flexible Tiles

Power BI lets you create custom views that are unique for them. This gives users full control over how they want their data to be presented so that it aligns with their company’s business requirements. This feature also allows users to easily integrate their apps with other programs like Excel or SharePoint and access these without exiting the dashboard. Through this, there’s more time earned to concentrate on daily tasks than unnecessary time-wasting traversing across several apps.

Personalized Dashboards

One of the most compelling features of Power BI is that it helps you create unique reports, dashboards, and apps that are easy-to-use and understand. This not only saves you time on unnecessary tasks, only on meaningful ones.

Natural Language Q&A Box

Interacting data with your data is made possible because of the natural language question and answer box. You can ask questions such as “How many employees do I have now?” or “What were my sales numbers last month?” Answers to your questions will be populated and tabulated for better viewing. This feature makes it easy for users to gain business intelligence without learning a complex language or help from IT personnel.

DAX Data Analysis

Data Analysis Expressions (DAX) is a connective tissue that links all of Power BI’s data visualization capabilities. This makes it easy for users to be familiar with Excel formulas as every button has some link to a function. Further, you can utilize it because of its predefined codes to conduct analytics tailored for your organization. Currently, 200 functions are available in the Power BI library, and this continues to increase as creators add more.

Content Packs

One of the Power BI features you can utilize is the content packs that include data models, datasets, dashboards, embedded queries, etc. Use it to have a quick analysis by giving pre-built reports and datasets that can be viewed in one click. The content packs can also be shared with other Power BI subscribers to make the most of this same analysis.

How can ECF Data help you with your Power BI implementation

ECF Data is a certified Microsoft Gold partner, and we are composed of a team of experts that will guide you during the process. Additionally, ECF offers the following:
• ECF Data’s focus is on you: We don’t just do the Power BI implementation for the sake of it. It’s our goal for you to maximize to solution and make sure that you achieve the digital transformation that you deserve.
• Our experts guide you, not just do the job for you: Because Power BI deals with data, we usually encounter intimidated and adamant employees. Our team is ready to offer their helping hand, even after the implementation.
• We want the best for you: We’re certainly not a walking advertisement, but we only recommend products not just for the sake of sale but because we believe that they’re the best out there. With a Microsoft stamp in it, there’s no question about it.