Understanding your company’s business operations, sales figures, customer base, and other variables is a key component of corporate success.
Therefore, if you can identify better business prospects and analyze market trends, you can make smart business decisions.
However, businesses nowadays are typically swamped with data.
To be precise, businesses have all the data they need to excel but don’t know how to use it to their advantage. This is where a sound business intelligence (BI) strategy comes into play.
But the real question is: how can you leverage BI appropriately that would help your company grow?
Well, you can do it by hiring Microsoft business intelligence consulting services that can help you leverage a powerful BI tool to its full capacity.
But what are BI tools, and how can they benefit your business?
Let’s understand these aspects in greater detail!
What Are Business Intelligence Tools?
Business intelligence tools, often known as BI tools, are software solutions that aggregate a lot of data from various sources, such as files, emails, financial records, business documents, images, and videos, among others.
These software solutions aid in data preparation for analysis to generate reports, dashboards, and data visualizations that improve decision-making skills, boost efficiency and productivity, detect market trends, and discover new business prospects.
Companies can take advantage of their data to generate actionable insights that facilitate the growth and scalability of their businesses and help them win a competitive edge in the market.
Power BI: A Leading Business Intelligence Tool
Having to make decisions based on a sizeable chunk of unprocessed data is certainly a daunting experience that every business owner has possibly had.
This makes visualizing the bigger picture on your own a difficult chore. Only if you have access to analytical insights, would things be different. You’ll be able to make reliable predictions and sound business decisions. Isn’t it?
This is where Power BI comes into the picture!
Power BI is a component of the Microsoft Power Platform and is accessible on any device, just like Power App and Power Automate.
It is a renowned AI tool that is preferred by many successful and dynamic businesses in the industry and it facilitates analysis of every variable to make better judgments.
The beauty of Power BI is that it allows users or decision-makers to conveniently view and access the information that is pertinent to the decisions they must make. It does so with the help of its dashboard’s visual representations.
As a result, Power BI makes business intelligence accessible to all employees who need to review data and make judgments.
Every critical decision can be backed by reliable data. With Power BI, data is constantly updated and analyzed in real time, enabling businesses to make decisions based on facts and figures.
Features and Components of the Dynamic Power BI Tool
1. Power BI Desktop
Power BI Desktop facilitates the development of BI and data analysis capabilities by enabling everything to be seamlessly integrated into one solution. It is a free tool that can be downloaded and set up to access data and generate reports without needing to have specialized query or report creation abilities.
2. Power Pivot
Power Pivot is a data modeling tool used to develop models and define relationship calculations. You can quickly analyze large volumes of data from multiple sources using Power Pivot, and can effortlessly share analytical insights.
3. Power Query
Power Query assists you in discovering, connecting, integrating, and optimizing data sources to fulfill your analysis needs. Power Query allows you to import data into numerous databases, feeds, or cloud-based services in addition to a single data source like an Excel spreadsheet.
Data sources can be files, databases, Azure, the Web, databases, or even the Excel tables in the existing worksheet.
4. Power View
Power View is a data visualization tool that enables you to make interactive charts, maps, graphs, and other visualizations from your data. Power View is accessible in Excel, SharePoint, SQL Server, and Power BI.
5. Power Q&A
With the help of Power Q&A, data can be explored instantly to generate a response via a natural language. For instance, the response to the query, “What were the total sales last year?” This component of the Microsoft Power BI is one of its most dynamic and interactive tools.
6. Power Map
Power Map is a three-dimensional (3-D) data visualization tool that enables you to find insights that conventional two-dimensional (2-D) charts and tables would not offer you.
With Power Map, you can create visual tours that you can share with individuals by plotting temporal and geographic data on a 3-D globe or customized map, presenting it over time.
7. Artificial Intelligence
Every organization needs revolutionary capabilities to thrive in the big data era, including the ability to visualize data, analyze advanced data structures, and turn them into actionable insights.
With the help of Power BI’s AI Insights, you can access several pre-trained machine learning models that can optimize your data processing activities.
Through the Home and Add Column tabs in Power Query Editor, users can access AI Insights and all of its related features and functionalities.
AI facilitates the application of text analytics and picture recognition, the implementation of automated machine learning skills in machine learning models, and the integration of Azure Machine Learning.
Top Benefits of Employing the Power BI Tool for Your Business
1. Collaboration and Sharing
Power BI is a tool designed to make sharing and collaboration fast and convenient. Through channels that enable real-time collaboration, you can instantly share dashboards and reports with internal or third-party users.
The following advantages of the sharing and collaboration features can boost your company’s productivity and profitability:
- Agile adjustment to new situations
- Faster decision-making
- Quick feedback
- Active in-sync collaboration
Teams can collaborate on a single report at the same time and see what the other team member is working on thanks to features like workspaces.
2. Interactive Dashboards and Reports
One of the most critical features and functionalities of Power BI is its range of dashboards and reporting capabilities. These tools are not only highly customizable but also interactive.
You can aggregate, consolidate, and present data in a simple visual manner by using the various visualization tools in Power BI dashboards and reports.
Additionally, the process of creating reports and dashboards is no longer complex or technical.
Power BI eliminates this obstacle and enables conventional employees from non-technical backgrounds to take advantage of this platform feature. It ultimately reduces reliance on technical experts.
3. Integration with Various Data Sources
Power BI’s integration capability, which enables you to integrate multiple data sources, is one coveted feature in general that makes it a necessity for your company.
The scope of Power BI’s data source integration is remarkable, encompassing everything from Microsoft products to third-party applications.
All of these factors work together to equip a business with a robust data analytics platform that can access data from countless sources to generate the most extensive and statistically reliable reports.
Additionally, Power BI’s capabilities as an analytics tool continue to grow as new data sources are periodically introduced, integrated, and updated.
4. Added Functionality With Other Microsoft Applications
Power BI also includes built-in features and compatibility with several other Microsoft applications, allowing you to employ them whenever required.
Business users, for instance, usually need a variety of Power BI reports and dashboards for their operational processes. Applications for Power BI can accelerate this process by introducing numerous dashboards and reports that are specifically designed for this purpose.
This facilitates the efficient and effective presentation of dashboards and reports to the entire company or specific groups of employees.
Developers can also modify navigation routes to make it more convenient for users to access the desired content via Power BI applications. Additionally, it aids viewers in understanding the network of relationships that connects various dashboards and reports.
5. Microsoft Excel Integration
Power BI is often lauded for its accessibility and flexibility, making it simple for anyone to become adept with it fast. This benefit is also applicable to new users.
Now, how does that work?
Because Power BI offers strong Excel integration, it ensures a seamless migration to its system for all the enterprises that still count on Excel for its reporting or analytical capabilities.
A company doesn’t need to spend time learning a new language or software application to integrate their data models, excel queries, and reports into Power BI’s platform. It can, essentially, start using its capabilities and services right away.
6. Global Accessibility
Since Power BI is a cloud-based software solution, its servers are not restricted by specific locations.
As long as your employees have an internet connection, they can access Power BI from anywhere, pick up work right from where they left off, or review their reports and dashboards.
If an employee has to work from home or while traveling, this capability of Power BI is very beneficial for both the employee and the company.
How so?
It prevents work disruptions for employees and allows normal business operations to continue.
Additionally, the platform can be accessed through smartphone apps instead of only via desktop computers and laptops, rendering it even more flexible.
7. Affordability
Data analysis and business intelligence were formerly expensive offerings with higher charges, and this is still true to a certain extent today when collaborating with independent analysts or analytic platforms.
Power BI, on the other hand, has dramatically broken the price barrier by becoming fairly affordable for companies of all sizes, from small to large.
Regardless of size, Power BI enables your organization to benefit from its robust computing services at a modest price and ensures that you keep up with more established businesses in the industry.
Why Should You Hire Microsoft Project Consulting Services?
Your BI team needs to have a team of professionals that are committed to implementing changes, regardless of its size.
Your BI team should include the following professionals with:
- Extensive experience retrieving and presenting data
- Analytical data capabilities to gather relevant insights
- Capablilty of assisting the company by putting the data into action
Your business can require training for many departments. Your company’s employees need to comprehend how the data will aid in making smarter business decisions.
But, you will get the most out of your BI strategy if you foster a strong relationship between your business intelligence team and your other employees.
However, some of these responsibilities may overlap based on the size of your organization. If this happens, it can call for the need to hire a Microsoft consulting company for expert guidance in data analytics and report building.
Moreover, since technology is constantly evolving, your business intelligence plan should include maintaining an updated suite of tools.
An existing technology that works well for your business operations may not in some years. Further, it can be replaced by another technology that is even more robust and effective.
To prevent your data from ending up in silos, the technology employed should be well-integrated. You must take into account scalability and comprehend how these solutions will affect your business workforce.
Along with all the above-mentioned criteria, you need to collaborate with a Microsoft consulting services partner.
A Microsoft business intelligence consulting services provider comes with great experience and skillsets. They have the expertise to collaborate with you to determine what mix of applications and services will provide your business intelligence analyst the best chance of success.
Hire Integrative Systems as Your Microsoft Consulting Services Partner
Data is being aggregated at an astounding rate and volume, and your organization may not be able to extract meaningful insights.
You may have all the tools and technologies relevant to your business, such as Microsoft SQL Server, SSRS, and Power BI. But, you might not have the level of expertise required to leverage the data to your complete advantage.
Are you still assessing your business requirements, or do you need to make the most of your existing Microsoft solutions?
Or do you just need assistance getting started with Microsoft technologies like Power BI?
In any case, Integrative Systems can help your manifest and achieve your desired business goals.
We are a certified Microsoft consulting services partner, based in Chicago, with years of industry experience and expertise. Our Power BI consulting professional will walk you through every step of the process.
Contact us today at [email protected] to book your Microsoft BI consultation and get started working with us right away!
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The cost of the AS400 iSeries application development project depends on multiple factors—project scope, technology stack, man-hours required, engagement model, business objective, workload volume/complexity, legacy state, and more. Having said that, we aim to strike a balance between cost, quality, and time for maximum customer satisfaction.
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