Data is everywhere. It’s in all our devices and it’s constantly being shuttled back and forth, downloaded, uploaded, shared and emailed. And we’re constantly creating more data. In fact, we generate so much data it can seem overwhelming trying to figure out ways to make use of it. Where do you even begin?
Data itself is simply information. Humans excel when they find innovative ways to utilize information to, ultimately, make more informed decisions and take more informed actions. That’s why we love Power BI. It helps our clients transform data into meaningful, actionable information that helps them better carry out their mission. Both public and private sector organizations have important work to do. Power BI helps them carry out that work more intelligently.
There are a variety of business intelligence solutions out there. But here are five reasons why we love Power BI.
1. You Don’t Have to Move Data
With Power BI you don’t have to deal with the hassles of moving data around in order to make sense of it. Instead, Power BI connects directly to hundreds of data sources from any location – in the cloud, on-premise, within spreadsheets. Power BI doesn’t care where data is or what type of data it is. Whatever and wherever it is, Power BI connects to it and helps you make sense of it.
2. Visualization
The awesome visualization capabilities of Power BI are, for obvious reasons, its most attention-grabbing feature. Power BI allows users to create immersive, visually compelling reports that can be explored interactively and collaboratively. This is the case for historical data sets and real-time data. Power BI dashboards are sandboxes – users can create, customize and visualize practically anything.
3. Works Anywhere Across Devices
Today more than any other time, the capability of working remotely is critical. Power BI, like everything in the Microsoft 365 ecosystem, enables people and organizations to work wherever and whenever they need to. With native apps for iOS, Android and Windows devices, the organizational insights afforded by Power BI can be accessed on any device. Plus, it seamlessly integrates with Microsoft business apps like Dynamics 365 and Excel.
4. Data Analytics
If you are a data analyst delivering reporting and analytics to your organization, Power BI lets you be productive and creative with what you build. Power BI Desktop is a feature-rich data mashup and report authoring tool. You can combine data from disparate databases, files, and web services with visual tools that help you understand and fix data quality and formatting issues automatically.
5. Bring Data to Life
Power BI can unify all an organization’s data, whether in the cloud or on-premises. Using the Power BI gateways, users can connect SQL Server databases, Analysis Services models, and many other data sources to the same dashboards in Power BI. If users already have reporting portals or applications, embedding Power BI reports and dashboards results in a truly unified experience.
Business intelligence has become a ubiquitous buzzword. So, it’s important to carefully consider your organization’s needs and goals. Power BI has been deployed in numerous organizations to connect data sources into one location, making it easy (and beautiful) to visualize, collaborate on and share. If your organization needs help getting started with Power BI, let us know.
