You may have heard of Power BI before. What exactly is Power BI? How much does it cost? Why is it worth implementing? Microsoft Power BI is one of the most popular Business Intelligence tools – i.e. dynamically developing analytics that enables you to combine, process and present business data based on large Big Data sets.
Microsoft Power BI – what is it?
With Power BI, you can significantly expand the standard reporting capabilities of Dynamics 365 Business Central. Advanced, personalized analytics can be shared with users in Power BI as well as made available directly on Business Central pages.
Basically, Power BI is not a single tool, but a set of advanced business analytics tools available in the SaaS model, i.e. in the cloud, which means that installation on local servers is not needed. The solution facilitates integration of various data sources – the ones available in the cloud as well as in on-premises environments.
The Power BI package consists primarily of:
- Power BI Desktop and Power BI Report Builder, which are applications for integrating with data, building and publishing reports in Power BI Online;
- Power BI Online, a browser-based service that allows you to share reports with other users.
What is Power BI used for?
The functionalities offered within Power BI have been designed not only to enable analysis of data sets of virtually any size, but also their visualization in a way that is accessible to all users. Even those who do not have much to do with with analytics. As a user, you can leverage this Business Intelligence tool for:
- real-time analysis based on many different data sources, such as sensors in factories or social media analytics;
- creating advanced and personalized visualizations and interactive reports using dedicated applications (Power BI Desktop and Power BI Report Builder);
- importing data from different locations;
- sharing reports published in the service (including those in the form of interactive whiteboards);
- data protection through special functions such as confidentiality labels or encryption;
- predictive modeling.
Where does Power BI get its data from?
Power BI can use several hundred different external sources such as:
- hand-imported Excel or PDF files,
- SQL Database,
- GitHub,
- Salesforce,
- Google Analytics,
- the entire Microsoft 365 suite (formerly Office 365),
- all services available within the Power Platform.
The list of tools is long as almost all data collection applications that your company uses can be used as data sources.
And what costs can you expect when implementing the solution? A Business Intelligence tool such as Power BI does not generate increased financial expenses especially because it is available in the cloud model. The purchase of licenses ensures quick access without the need for any infrastructure expansion. In the SaaS model, the service is constantly updated, which does not require any additional actions from users.
Summary: 5 reasons to implement Power BI
Let’s say, you decide to implement Power BI – what are the real benefits for your business? The 5 main benefits include:
- full timeliness of personalized reports, which are a great basis for making business decisions;
- access to up-to-date data via mobile devices;
- high independence of users in the area of analytics;
- the ability to process huge volumes of Big Data;
- data protection with advanced features.
