Over the past 30 years, all businesses have gone through an era of digital transformation. The move from paper to digital has resulted in a massive increase in the amount of valuable data captured and stored. By 2025 it is estimated that there will be 175 zettabytes of data stored worldwide. To put this into perspective, one zettabyte is approximately one billion terabytes. The rise of captured information presents an opportunity for businesses to analyse this data to make informed business decisions. However, with such a vast amount of information, businesses must rely on specialised software for analysis. Microsoft Power BI is a powerful business analytics and data visualisation tool designed to allow businesses of all sizes to bridge the gap between data and decision-making. In this article, HAYNE discuss 9 benefits of using Power BI for a business.
Ease of use
One of the key benefits of Power BI is its ease of use. This allows businesses to have access to powerful insights without the need for any specialised knowledge or expertise. Power BI users can quickly and easily create reports and dashboards from multiple data sources with drag and drop functionality. Users can also use the Q&A feature to ask questions such as what was the total volume of sales in a specific year? Power BI will then display a graph or chart to visualise the data in response to the question.
Make accurate data-driven business decisions
Power BI users can analyse and visualise data from multiple data sets to create an accurate view of where a business currently is, and any re-occurring trends. Having this information in a clear visual format allows business to create predictive insights. These insights enable businesses to understand what is working well for them and any potential shortcomings. These insights can be turned into actions, empowering employees to quickly make data-driven decisions to drive strategic actions.
Ensure data is always up to date
For businesses to make informed data-driven decisions, datasets must be up to date. With businesses constantly collecting data, it is important that the analytics and visualisation is updated regularly to reflect these changes. Power BI allows data to be refreshed daily, or even hourly. As the data is compressed and the service is run through Azure cloud, this process is both cost and time-efficient.
View Power BI reports on any device, from anywhere
With the pandemic driving hybrid work, it has become increasingly important to be able to access business applications from anywhere, on any device. Power BI has native apps for iOS, Android, and Windows devices. Whether you are a salesperson on the road requiring a quick update on sales figures, or working from home, you can access Power BI on any device with an internet connection.
Share dashboards instantly with other departments
After a dashboard has been created in Power BI, it can easily be shared with other users or departments to share data visualisations and analytics. Being able to share these insights enables employees to drive innovation and collaborate to develop business strategies.
Save time with templates
For businesses looking to streamline their workflows, report templates can easily be created and used within Power BI. These can then be shared between users as a starting point for a new report’s layout, data modelling, and queries. This can save time for users, especially if similar reports are used by different departments.
Built with Security in Mind
When dealing with large amounts of company data, security is of the utmost importance. Power BI is secured end-to-end with double encryption to ensure that all analytic insights can be created and shared with confidence. Risky behaviour patterns can be identified with the oversight capabilities in Power BI and the Microsoft Cloud App Security Portal. Power BI is also built to meet data compliance and residency requirements both at a country and industry level.
Make use of AI
Over the past decade, Microsoft has invested significant time and money into AI and Machine Learning. Power BI takes advantage of this investment and the advances in technology to empower employees to prepare data, build machine learning models and find insights quickly and easily from large data sets.
Integration with other applications and data sources
Power BI seamlessly integrates with other Microsoft products such as Dynamics 365, Excel, and Azure. However, there are over 70 other connectors and integrations including Salesforce, DropBox, and Google Analytics. The wide variety of data sources and integrations allows businesses to combine the analysis of data from multiple systems to provide accurate and holistic analysis.
HAYNE Solutions
HAYNE has a proven record of delivering best-in-class solutions for our clients. We offer consultancy, project delivery, training, and support services, we can be your partner throughout your journey.
Many of our vendors have solutions that can be connected and integrated to Power BI including CCH IBM, Tagetik & LucaNet.
HAYNE use the skills and knowledge of our consultants to understand how to implement Power BI reporting on other client systems to achieve seamless integration.
If you would like to find out more about how you can use Power BI effectively, please contact us.