Power BI, originally called Project Crescent, was launched in July 2011, bundled with SQL Server. Later, it was renamed Power BI and presented as Power BI for Office 365 in September 2013. It was released as a standalone product in July 2015 after adding more features including enterprise-level data connectivity and security options, apart from its original Excel features like Power Query, Power Pivot, and Power View. Now Microsoft brings regular updates of the Power BI application with new features and improvements every month and users can download the latest edition from the Power BI site. The Windows Store has Power BI Desktop, which Windows 10 users can get from.
Let us learn more about the different features of power BI, its components, and its benefits of power BI.
Top Benefits of Power BIkanini
Microsoft Power BI advantages could be the right choice for any business big, medium, or small that is looking for reporting and analytical capabilities beyond Excel as it offers easy data visualization and analysis across the entire business and gets deep insights into the business operation and performance.
Here is a rundown of the undeniable Power BI benefits that all types of businesses can available as per their business needs.
- Artificial Intelligence (AI)
- Allows Analysis and Sharing of Big Data
- Integration with a Wide Array of Data Sources
- Personalized Dashboards and Interactive Reports
- No Geographic Limits to Accessing Power BI
- Access to Information in Real-time
- Excel integration
- Frequent and Consistent Updates
- Interactive UI/UX Features
- Customizing Security Features
- Cost-Effective and Affordable
- No Need for Any Specialized Technical Support
- Anywhere, Any-device Accessibility
- Added Functionality with Other Microsoft Apps
- Effective Collaboration
- Time-Saving Templates
- Scalability
- Data-driven Insights
- Performance Optimization
- Version Control
1. Artificial Intelligence (AI)
In the Power BI uses and advantages list, the topmost benefits of Microsoft Power BI perhaps are that it allows access to image recognition, and text analytics, creates machine learning models, and also to integrate with Azure Machine Learning. Microsoft AI’s latest features allow even non-data scientists to prepare data, build machine learning models, find insights from structured and unstructured data.
2. Allows Analysis and Sharing of Big Data
Using Power BI with Azure helps tackle colossal data volumes, reducing the time to get insights and increasing collaboration between business analysts, data engineers, and data scientists.
In the era of big data, where organizations handle vast volumes of diverse datasets, Power BI efficiently manages large datasets. Its robust architecture enables seamless integration and analysis, revealing hidden insights. Power BI also facilitates sharing these insights, enabling collaborative decision-making. Power BI includes built-in AI features like AutoML and AI Insights, providing advanced capabilities. Discover these Power BI benefits and more by checking out this amazing Power BI training to upskill and visualize better.
3. Integration with a Wide Array of Data Sources
- Power BI's versatility lies in its seamless integration with diverse data sources, making it a comprehensive business analytics solution. It connects to various data platforms, databases, and cloud services.
- Users can consolidate information from Excel, cloud applications, on-premises databases, and real-time streaming data. This connectivity ensures organizations harness insights from all operational facets, breaking down silos for a holistic view.
- Power BI adapts to structured and unstructured data, facilitating comprehensive analysis. This feature enhances insight accuracy and empowers data-driven decisions based on a unified data ecosystem.
4. Personalized Dashboards and Interactive Reports
Power BI dashboard benefits include a customizable, intuitive, interactive dashboard instead of one-size-fits-all, as per a company’s needs with an easy drag-and-drop functionality option for generating a customized report. Options for producing powerful models and visualizations make the advantages of the Power BI dashboard almost limitless.
Often businesses need multiple Power BI dashboards and reports. The Power BI Pro users can quickly deploy a collection of purpose-built dashboards and reports and distribute them to the entire organization or specific teams or departments with the Power BI Apps.
5. No Geographic Limits to Accessing Power BI
In the age of remote work and global collaboration, the ability to access analytics tools without geographic constraints is paramount. Power BI offers users the flexibility to connect and collaborate from any location. Whether team members are working from different offices, across various time zones, or remotely, Power BI breaks down geographical barriers. This accessibility ensures that decision-makers have real-time insights, fostering a more agile and responsive organizational culture.
6. Access to Information in Real-time
The dashboard gets updated in real-time whenever data is pushed or streamed while displaying and updating the visuals with the latest data and information enabling solving problems quickly, identifying opportunities, and timely handling of time-sensitive data efficiently.
Microsoft brings regular monthly updates and offers a Power BI community platform where users can provide suggestions. It listens and implements the most frequently asked-for functionality by users. It means that the users always get access to the latest and most advanced features that help them make accurate business decisions.
7. Excel integration
Hundreds of businesses still use Excel for analytics and reports. The Power BI benefits for businesses preferring to continue with Excel lies in its superb seamless integration with Excel helps to connect queries, data models, and reports to Power BI dashboards and create interactive visualizations with instant access to the right data whenever needed.
8. Frequent and Consistent Updates
Staying ahead in the fast-paced world of data analytics requires continuous innovation and adaptation. Power BI addresses this need with its commitment to frequent and consistent updates. Microsoft regularly introduces new features, enhancements, and performance improvements, ensuring that Power BI remains at the forefront of analytics technology. Users can expect to benefit from the latest advancements without the hassle of manual updates, staying relevant and competitive in an ever-evolving business landscape.
9. Interactive UI/UX Features
Making things visually appealing, easy drag and drop functionality with features to copy all formatting across visualizations. User experience (UX) is a critical aspect of any analytics tool, and Power BI excels in providing an interactive and intuitive user interface (UI). The platform's design prioritizes user-friendliness, making data analysis accessible to a wide range of users, regardless of their technical expertise. Interactive features, such as drill-through functionality, allow users to explore data at a granular level, gaining deeper insights with a few clicks. This emphasis on a positive user experience contributes to increased adoption and utilization across the organization.
10. Customizing Security Features
It is possible to set up row-level-security (RSL) filters to ensure that viewers can only see the relevant data, preventing data from being misused by mitigating the data breach risk.
11. Cost-Effective and Affordable
- Power BI is relatively less expensive and affordable especially for small and mid-sized businesses compared to other business intelligence and analytics tools and an appropriate version of Power BI can be chosen as per the need.
- Power BI users can avail of three different versions: Power BI Desktop, Power BI Pro, and Power BI Premium. Power BI Desktop is a free version that tiny businesses or start-ups can download on a desktop to make reports and dashboards.
- BI Pro, on the other hand, is quite affordable for small and mid-sized companies with just $9.99 USD per user per month. At the same time, the Power BI Premium pricing depends on the deployment size and the number of users.
12. No Need for Any Specialized Technical Support
Power BI is a self-service business intelligence platform. No technical or IT team is required to run it, create analysis or generate reports. Furthermore, it supports a natural language interface and uses intuitive graphic designer tools. The simple drag-and-drop functionality helps to create dashboards quickly with a few mouse clicks. All these make Power BI very user-friendly and can be used by anyone without much technical knowledge.
13. Anywhere, Any-device Accessibility
Irrespective of the place of work (from home, on the go, in a client meeting), Power BI can be accessed by anyone in the team through iOS, Android, and Windows devices. All it needs is an internet connection.
14. Added Functionality with Other Microsoft Apps
- Power BI's integration with Microsoft applications forms a strategic alliance, enhancing functionality and creating a cohesive ecosystem. It connects seamlessly with Microsoft's productivity tools.
- Integration with Excel, SharePoint, and Teams unifies data-driven insights with business processes. Users can import data from Excel, enhance analysis with Power BI's visualizations, and share reports via SharePoint, fostering collaboration.
- Connection with Teams embeds Power BI reports in team discussions, streamlining communication and decision-making.
- This synergy enhances workflows, eliminates silos, and ensures seamless data insights across the Microsoft ecosystem.
15. Effective Collaboration
With its great team collaboration feature, Power BI helps a team to share dashboards or reports within its workspaces and allows co-ownership of a report or dashboard. Its ‘Chat in Team’s button for reports and Power BI tabs enables everyone in the channel to get notified whenever a new report is generated. The report can even be embedded in an external site, or the links of the report could be shared via Outlook.
16. Time-Saving Templates
- In business analytics, efficiency is crucial, and Power BI meets this need with time-saving templates. These pre-built templates speed up report creation, allowing quick starts without extensive customization.
- Power BI's library covers various industries, functions, and data scenarios, offering invaluable starting points for financial reports, sales dashboards, and operational metrics. Users save substantial time and effort using these templates instead of designing from scratch.
- These templates are both convenient and adaptable, allowing customization to meet specific needs.
- This feature is ideal for businesses standardizing reporting across departments, saving time, and ensuring uniform data presentation.
- Power BI's templates enhance productivity, letting organizations focus on insights rather than report design.
17. Scalability
Power BI easily adapts to both small businesses and large enterprises. It grows with your business without any infrastructure worries.
18. Data-driven Insights
Power BI helps users find valuable insights from their data with interactive charts, easy-to-use tools, and AI analytics. This leads to better decisions and business success.
19. Performance Optimization
Power BI has tools to make reports load faster, reduce delays, and use resources efficiently, ensuring a smooth experience even with big datasets.
20. Version Control
Power BI lets users track changes to reports and datasets, go back to earlier versions, and collaborate effectively on report projects.
Components of Power BI
Scaler- Power Query - Power Query helps to discover, connect, combine, and refine data sources to meet your analysis need.
- Power Pivot - Power pivot is a data modeling technique to create models and establish relationship calculations.
- Power View - Power view helps to create interactive charts, graphs, maps, and other visuals in Excel, SharePoint, SQL Server, and Power BI that bring data to life.
- Power Map - Power map is a 3-D data visualization tool.
- Power BI Desktop - Power BI desktop helps to get everything easily under the same solution to develop BI and data analysis experience.
- Power Q&A - Power Q&A is used to explore data in the fastest way to get an answer using natural language. For example, an answer to a question like what was the total sales last year?
Apart from these hundreds of data sources from files (like Excel, PDF, SharePoint Folder, XML), databases (like SQL Server Database, Oracle Database, IBM databases, Amazon Redshift, Google BigQuery), other Power BI databases, Azure data connections, various online services (like Dynamics 365, Salesforce Reports, Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics, Facebook and others) can be connected into Power BI.
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How to Use Microsoft Power Apps To Simplify Customer Communication?
Power Apps is a group of applications, services, connectors, and data platforms, as well as allowing a rapid development environment to build customized applications suitable for any specific business needs. Power Apps quickly build custom business apps that connect to the stored data either in the underlying data platform (called Microsoft Dataverse) or in other online/on-premises data sources like SharePoint, Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, SQL Server, and more.
It is also a superb example of a Platform as a Service (PaaS) that allows the creation of mobile or tablet apps (that can run on Android, IOS, and Windows) for internal business users. Power Apps can be integrated into Power BI reports using the Power Apps visual.
Here is an example of Power Apps to simplify customer communication:
The Challenge
Too many emails can cause work disruption, waste of time and man hours, or inefficiency in customers’ user base. Simplification of customer communication by delivering easy-to-use tools that drastically cut down on the number of emails required can be best done by Power Apps.
The Solution
Microsoft Forms, Power Automate, and SharePoint Online (all included with a subscription to Office 365) can simplify customer communications, especially when experiencing a problem. Just by sending only ONE email, all the required information to sort the issue out can be done by drastically cutting down on the back-and-forth emails that it takes to resolve issues.
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How Much Does Power BI Actually Cost?
As for the pricing policy of Power BI, the company provides various packages for its users and clients. The Power BI Desktop is free for the individual users for creating and distributing the report. Power BI Pro stands at $9. For a fixed amount of $99 per user per month they get collaboration, sharing, and ad-hoc analysis. There are two models of Power BI, which are Standard and Premium, for big organizations or users with big datasets, Power BI Premium offers superior performance and capacity at $4,995 per capacity per month. Also, of interest is Power BI Premium Per User, offered at $20 per user per month, which includes the features of Pro, plus dedicated cloud/on-premises capacity.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the benefits of Power BI extend far beyond conventional analytics tools, positioning it as an indispensable asset for businesses navigating the data-centric landscape of 2024. Each of the Power BI benefits discussed contributes to the platform's versatility, integration capabilities, and user-friendly features. By harnessing the power of Power BI, organizations can not only transform raw data into actionable insights but also foster innovation, drive sustainable growth, and navigate the complexities of an ever-evolving business environment.
As we move forward, the role of Power BI in shaping the future of data analytics is set to become even more pivotal, offering a strategic advantage to organizations that embrace its capabilities. Last but not the least check out the trainings for Business Intelligence and Power BI.
