Introduction:
Power BI is majorly a business tool that is used for business analytic purposes. It is a collection of software services, apps, and connectors that work together to turn your raw and massive data into a systematic manner for meeting the needs of business analysis. Power BI can handle everything from a simple excel sheet to a wide variety of data types. It is an interactive reporting platform that works with your data and gets the right answer very quickly. Power BI Desktop, Power BI service, and mobile apps are the three basic elements are designed to create, share and consume business insights. You can easily share that with anyone or everyone you want.
Power BI can connect to a bunch of different data sources that are Excel, SQL, Relational databases, Cloud sources, and services like salesforce or even a webpage. This data is represented through interactive reports, charts, graphs, and live data dashboards which help users to develop powerful business insights quickly and effectively. The use of Power BI is different for every people according to their role in a project or on a team. We can use Power BI in two different ways, one is for creating reports and shaping data or working with the data, and the other is to make business decisions by using these reports.
Features:
After having a brief overview of Power BI, let’s discuss some of its key features:
1- Collective Power BI Desktop application:
The collective Power BI Desktop tool allows you to build reports by accessing the data quickly. It doesn’t need any technical and advanced skills to create a report with this tool, it is the easiest and quickest way to learn and use it. Also, the Power BI Desktop version is free and doesn’t need an expert to operate the application.
2- Personalized visualization:
Every company has its own way of getting things done and they function differently. In the case of visualization, the right way to go is the standard way. The Power BI tool has a delinquency standard which sometimes is insufficient for some organizations because of their complicated data. These circumstances lead to access and design of the custom library of visualization that serves your need very well.
3- Data visibility:
Data is the center of all business activity, today organizations are facing the main challenge of operating the data with other datasets to obtain useful information. To understand this the best way to do that is by collecting different datasets and arranging them visually. This method helps in sending a deeper understanding of the data using which organizations can enjoy a competitive advantage over their competitors.
4- Security features:
The Microsoft Cloud App security feature in Power BI is advanced that enables users to protect important information, provide rich visibility, and control over data travel to detect and combat cyber threats across all Microsoft services. Its sensitivity labels feature is helpful for the director to identify sensitive data and alert their employees to handle them carefully. To create a different role for different users, developers of Power BI can also take advantage of its Row Level Security (RLS) capabilities. Its encryption features are also secure and protect data from any mishandling. The organizations and companies who have important data this security feature of Power BI is helpful for them.
So, these were key features of Power BI. Now, let’s move forward and have a look at what makes the platform so special? Here are some benefits of Power BI in detail.
Benefits:
1- Provide Business Intelligence for all:
Power BI is the platform where organizations of all sizes can make decisions based on data, not feelings or guts to create a better data-driven culture. Companies achieve this difficult task by perfectly putting business intelligence assets like dashboards and real-time reports. This creates a good impact for the entire company to make decisions and trustworthy data with the help of Power BI.
Currently Power BI has two versions,
- Power BI Desktop and
- Power BI service
The Desktop version of Power BI is free for everyone where users can connect to data and create reports. So, anyone can download and start using it. Power BI service is not free and users need a Power BI Pro license to use this service. The reports are created on Power BI Desktop and then published as dashboards on the Power BI service for the users to consume on any device and anywhere.
2- Well organized reports:
Power BI processes raw data into meaningful and informative content and brings data to life and helps decision-makers make better decisions through useful business insights. By connecting their data to Power BI users can choose visualizations in order to gain and share insights. Power BI represents the data through graphs, columns charts, pie charts, and live data dashboards to make powerful business insights quickly and effectively. Additionally, these reports are interactive and the implementation of these reports is easy and simple. Users can easily filter and watch their reports in seconds to collect more insight from their data.
3- Power BI can connect to a bunch of different data sources:
Power BI can connect to many data sources from file data sources like Excel and CSV to database sources like oracle database and snowflake to online data sources like Salesforce and adobe analytics or even a webpage. Also, its assimilation with Excel is outstanding in that enables the user to share all current Excel queries, data models, and reports without learning a new application.
4- Efficiency of Artificial Intelligence (AI):
Power BI provides three Artificial visualizations (Question and Answer visualization, key Influencers visualization, and Decomposition tree visualization). All these three visualizations allow users to get more value out of their data and reports and enhance their analytics. In Power BI Desktop users can create and add AI visualization reports then these reports can be published by the users on Power BI Service for sharing with other employees or consumers.
5- Constantly upgrading its features:
Power BI became one of the most important and useful data analytics and business analytics platform in the world. All dedication to making Power BI this much advanced goes to Microsoft which is continuously pouring its time and money into Power BI. Existing features of power BI are frequently improved and new features are added to the tool.
6- Very Convenient apps for sharing reports and contents:
Apps in Power BI are very much advanced and convenient to distribute Power BI reports to consumers. Power BI apps can easily share this report with a large group or team, an entire organization or companies, or even with a single person to increase team efficiency. Analyzing and sharing the report is generally a big task but with the help of Power BI, this task can be completed easily which saves your time on writing emails. This is one of the most outstanding benefits of Power BI.
Conclusion:
Power BI is the tool that has revolutionized the world of Business Intelligence. The tool is very much advanced, easy, and fast which makes it possible for a regular user of Excel or even for the non-technical people to analyze and visualize the data and share the same. For companies who are looking to launch, organize and grow their business, Power BI is a phenomenal tool for them.