“If we have data, let’s look at data. If all we have are opinions, let’s go with mine.”But having data isn’t enough – most businesses have more data than they can analyse. Data must be presented in such a way that it communicates something useful and actionable. In other words, you need to turn raw data into something the business can use.
Raw data often has inconsistencies, errors, and different ways of reporting the same thing. Power BI allows you to clean up these problems and manipulate the data into something you can work with. It also allows you to create a data model that will drive analysis and visuals. In other words, it has all the business intelligence features you need to make informed decisions.
It has several game-changing features such as:
- Being able to link to many different data sources.
- Being able to manipulate and clean the data.
- Presenting data in new and compelling ways.
- Creating dashboards and scorecards, including key performance indicators (KPIs).
- Being able to share reports and dashboards securely.
This means you can track specific business indicators, updated by one or more than one data source. You can create reports that use more than one data source. And you can create powerful dashboard-type reports that focus attention on specific areas. All updated automatically when the underlying data is updated. It’s powerful – as the name suggests.
Business intelligence was once out of the reach of departments and mid-sized businesses. Budgets were large and project lead times were long. Microsoft Power BI is the next generation of business intelligence and it has changed the way we work, and how we make decisions.
It’s easy to get started; you can download Power BI Desktop for free. If you need some help, we have end to end experience from cleaning data, creating data models, and advising on impactful reports. And we can train you in all aspects of Power BI.
So, if you are a department that wants to bring data together from more than one system, track specific indictors, or present data in a way that can’t be ignored, get in touch.
