TrustRadius, the B2B customer insights platform, reports the projected growth of global data to 63 zettabytes, or 63 billion terabytes, by 2025. Much of this data can be leveraged by companies to become more competitive in the market, however, the task can be quite daunting for employees to perform without special tools.
In fact, Accenture’s 2020 study shows that 74% of surveyed employees felt overwhelmed by the prospect of working with data. Microsoft’s unified platform for enterprise business intelligence, Power BI, is being adopted by more and more companies willing to benefit from data analytics and work with data more effectively. This article will show you the features and benefits of this software.
What Is Microsoft’s Power BI?
Microsoft Power BI is a suite of tools for business analytics tasks, including data visualization and business intelligence reporting. It is a user-friendly solution that can be used not only by tech-savvy users but also by those who do not have such skills.
The list of features and components of Power BI is long. Some of them are:
- Data connectivity for accessing multiple data sources such as databases, spreadsheets, and cloud big data platforms;
- Data preparation to cleanse, shape, and transform data to make it more suitable for analysis, even if it comes from different sources;
- Data modeling to define relationships between different data sources and analyze them together;
- Data visualization, including various forms such as tables, graphs, charts, as well as interactive dashboards that provide a comprehensive overview of different data;
- Scalability to support data analysis across organizations of different sizes;
- Artificial intelligence for advanced analytics and predictions;
- Improved collaboration through shared dashboards and reports;
- Security and compliance through encryption mechanisms and role-based access controls;
- Mobile and offline accessibility to meet the needs of different organizations.
Find more about the benefits of power bi.
What Can You Gain by Analyzing Your Company’s Data?
As you can see, using Power BI can improve your organization’s analytics process. Here are some important reasons to invest in an effective analytics tool.
1. Improve Your Decision-Making
To make more meaningful decisions, you should rely on evidence rather than intuition, and a powerful analytics tool like Power BI can help you with this task. The patterns, correlations, and trends it can identify in your data will help you develop an effective strategy.
In addition, analyzing business data helps you identify opportunities for business innovation, growth, and market expansion. It can also improve risk management by uncovering potential risks and vulnerabilities.
2. Real-Time Insights
While analyzing historical data gives you access to valuable insights about your company’s operations, having a unified view of multiple data sources on the same platform also lets you keep an eye on real-time data.
3. Measuring the Company’s Effectiveness
You can also use Power BI to measure key performance indicators (KPIs) to effectively assess the organization’s ability to achieve its goals. At the same time, tracking KPIs can help companies identify areas where adjustments are needed to improve efficiency.
4. Improving the Efficiency of Business Operations
One of the most illustrative use cases of BI for improving operational efficiency is optimizing supply chain management. The analysis helps you define potential bottlenecks, demand, and supply, and improve resource allocation to increase productivity and reduce costs.
5. Enhance Customer Experience
Both your business and your customers benefit when the customer experience is personalized and seamless. While the paths to achieving this quality of experience may not be obvious, Power BI can help you analyze data such as your customers’ demographics, buying behaviors, and preferences, and find effective solutions to attract more new customers and build loyalty with existing customers through targeted marketing and personalized offers.
Does Your Company Need Microsoft Power BI?
While Power BI is one of the most advanced business analytics solutions available on the market today, it is not the only platform used for analytics. Moreover, data analysis and visualization can be performed without these powerful applications. However, in certain cases, you may hardly find a better solution than Power BI.
1. Large Amounts of Data and High Complexity
As your organization accumulates more and more data, it is essential to deploy a scalable analytics solution capable of handling a growing volume. Microsoft Power BI is specifically designed to support processing large amounts of data.
2. Working with Data Generated by Multiple Sources
While there are quite effective analytics tools on the market, the ability of Power BI to bring together data from multiple scattered sources is unprecedented and of particular value to many organizations.
3. Accessibility for Users with Different Levels of Technical Knowledge
You will be hard-pressed to find a universal solution that allows both your staff with advanced programming skills and those without technical expertise to successfully use the analytics platform. Power BI is designed to benefit every employee.
4. Cost-Efficiency
Business analytics tools require investment. Power BI’s free version with limited features and various pricing plans makes it affordable for many companies, whereas the reduced effort it requires from users allows for achieving high ROI.
Conclusions
Power BI is one of the leading business intelligence platforms you can find in the modern market. It helps you transform your company’s data into a comprehensive source of information and practical ideas that will give your business a competitive edge and help you create a culture of data-driven decision-making.
While this approach may seem quite innovative, advanced data analytics is a necessity for organizations of various sizes in the modern world. Investing in a powerful business intelligence tool is a necessary step to the development.
