In the last blog of the Power BI Introduction, we have seen what is BI, the definition of Power BI, how it is helpful for Data Analysis, how Power BI works, an example of where it is used, followed by the popular services to share your reports and dashboards. Now let us talk about how it’s helpful for data analysts, business analysts, or as a matter of fact anyone who is dealing with data to make effective decisions.
Power BI improves upon traditional BI by offering what we call self-service business intelligence (self-service BI). Self-service BI is Power BI’s bread and butter. The goal of this is to eliminate the barriers between decision-makers and the answers they seek by minimizing the amount of technical work and knowledge needed to find those answers. That means much of the work of BI such as compiling the data, transforming it, and visualizing it can be done by people who aren’t software developers. And using a tool like Power BI means you don’t have to wait on software developers, you don’t have to be burdened by the time and effort it takes to build traditional BI solutions, and even get the answers you need faster.
Note: Power BI does not replace traditional BI development. Below is the difference between Self-Service BI and Traditional BI
Self-Service BI: Users can create their own data models and reports without waiting on software developers
Traditional BI: Trained software developers build data models and reports so others can use them
Let us now see the popular features and benefits of Power BI,
- Interactive dashboards and reports that can also be customized: Working with the countless visualization options in Power BI, dashboards, and reports means you can collate, summarize, and present information in a straightforward visual manner and even customize it according to our requirements to a great extent. Additionally, generating dashboards and reports is no longer a complicated and specialized process.
- Auto-sync of reports and dashboards with the data: Getting new information and data now doesn’t mean going through the process of report or dashboard generation all over again thanks to Power BI, where dashboards and reports are updated with the latest data from the data source in real-time. This feature results in multiple advantages like time savings, cost savings, increased efficiency, etc.
- Integration with various data sources: Power BI’s integration feature allows you to use many different data sources from Microsoft products like Excel to third-party tools and sources like data files or server databases. All of this combines to give a powerful data analytics platform that can call upon data from almost unlimited data sources for the most comprehensive and statistically accurate reports.
- Frequent and consistent updates: There are regular and consistent updates to the software, which not only add more and more new features but also fix any problems and bugs. And the most interesting part is that Microsoft takes great care to listen to community suggestions and implement the most demanded changes and functions.
- No geographic limits to access: We can access Power BI, resume our work, or check the reports and dashboards from any location imaginable, provided we have an internet connection. And, making it even more convenient, the platform can be accessed through smartphone applications and not only on laptops or desktop computers. Also, this feature greatly benefits both the employees and the organization if they need to work from home or during travel, ensuring their work is not interrupted, and business operations remain calm and carry on.
- Find answers fast with industry-leading AI: By taking advantage of the latest advances in Microsoft AI helps non-data scientists prepare data, build machine learning models, and find insights quickly from any type of data be it structured or unstructured data.
- Unparalleled Excel interoperation: Anyone who is familiar with Microsoft 365 can easily connect Excel queries, data models, and reports to Power BI Dashboards — helping to quickly gather, analyze, publish, and share Excel business data in new ways.
- Stream data in real-time: Know what’s happening now, not just in the past. From real-time traffic sensor data to social media sources, get access to real-time analytics so you’re always ready to make timely decisions.
The above were the popular features and benefits of Power BI and there are many others that you can always find on the official documentation website of Power BI. So that was the quick introduction to Power BI. I hope you enjoyed having a quick read. Congratulations on taking your first step in the Power BI journey, continue to explore. Happy learning, and Thank you!!
If there is no struggle there is no progress in your learning — quotes by Unknown
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