81% of organizations agree that data should fuel all decision-making. However, 63% of decision-makers report that they’re still not able to get the answers they need in a timely manner.
– EY Global Analytics Report 2021
Data is the king, but efficient processing gives organizations real power. There is no way an organization can use data to their benefit if they don’t turn this data into actionable insights. In order to make sense of the great quantities of digital information that an organization generates these days, it is quintessential to adopt a powerful business intelligence solution. Backed with such a technology, an organization is empowered to understand data and make smarter business decisions that drive growth.
Microsoft’s Power BI enables organizations to access and utilize data easily through its immersive and interactive dashboards. It delivers amazing data experiences and empowers employees to take charge of their data. Some organizations leverage Power BI to bring harmony to multiple data sets, while others want to streamline their reporting processes. But above all, every organization wants to tap into the immense power of analytics to make meaningful changes and transform operations. Now let’s take a closer look at how Power BI is transforming business decision-making.
The Power of Power BI
Power BI is one of the most popular business intelligence solutions in the market. As a part of the Microsoft Power Platform suite of solutions, Power BI allows organizations to connect to hundreds of data sources and get answers quickly. It is a powerful business intelligence tool meant to analyze and view data through compelling visualizations and interactive reports. With Power BI, users can transition from an ordinary spreadsheet to a dashboard with insightful visuals and data-rich reports with a single click.
Power BI is continually updated by Microsoft to meet the data needs of modern business users. It is a versatile platform with several tools for processing massive amounts of data, enabling users to not only collect but easily aggregate, visualize and analyze all the data. And because Power BI has such an intuitive interface and easy-to-use features that ensure a pretty low barrier to entry, even average business users can use it.
5 Major Benefits of Power BI
Power BI enables organizations to establish a data-driven culture with business intelligence for all. According to Microsoft, “Power BI delivers AI Superpowers for everybody and allows organizations to achieve powerful results by listening to data”. Below are some reasons why organizations choose and love Power BI:
- Simple and Intuitive Platform: The goal of Power BI is to enable everyone at every level of an organization to make confident decisions using up-to-the-minute analytics. Power BI’s easy-to-use features allow users, who are not data scientists or business analysts, to start taking great strides with the tool. It ensures that BI is woven into the fabric of how everyone works. Additionally, Power BI is designed in a way that is intuitive to Microsoft users, especially those familiar with Excel.
- Customizable Dashboards: Power BI allows users to easily design dashboards to track metrics that are important to them. Such customizations can happen at an individual, team, or department level. Users can choose data that are specific to their purposes, apply their preferred visualizations to display and connect that data and share to collaborate on their findings seamlessly within the platform. This is more efficient and actionable, allowing users to spend their time on information that’s most relevant to them.
- Powerful Data Processing: Power BI can seamlessly fetch a vast amount of data from many types of sources. This means users can unify data from different areas of the organization, regardless of whether it’s on-premises or in the Cloud. That includes sources like Dynamics 365, SharePoint, Excel, Azure SQL Server, and other cloud and on-premise data sources. Users can then slice and dice the data using simple, Excel-like tools.
- Impactful Visualizations: Users can choose from hundreds of visualizations and build attractive, compelling visuals and reports. How a person views data can have a huge bearing on the way it is perceived and understood. With Power BI, users can utilize visuals that strike the right chord and help portray the facts better. Users are empowered to create reports that are easily understood and appreciated. Leveraging the right mix of visuals, users can make statements, justify requests and decisions, confirm results and inspire action.
- Actionable Insights: With cohesive and beautifully displayed data at the management’s fingertips, they can easily spot opportunities for improvement and transformation. It enables organizations to optimize everything from spending to logistics, operations, customer relationships, and employee performance (just to name a few). Organizations can get business forecasts by utilizing Power BI’s machine learning capabilities to stay prepared should things take a turn for the worst, or even the best – this is a valuable capability in uncertain times such as these.
How can Organizations Leverage Power BI to Transform Decision-making?
Organizations across the globe are using Power BI to make better business decisions, solve problems, become more efficient, and achieve new ambitions. There is a multitude of ways that businesses can leverage Power BI to make data-driven decisions better and faster. Below are some examples of how AgreeYa helped customers transform their decision-making:
- Enhanced, Unified Reporting: Using Power BI, a leading debt recovery solutions provider was able to move away from limited and inefficient reporting processes that kept their employees busy with time-consuming data entry and restricted management’s visibility over business performance. Power BI reports delivered a clearer, real-time perspective over the business. Different departments leveraged analytics and collaboration to improve operations.
- Control Over Disparate Data: A government agency responsible for preserving the creeks and rivers of San Antonio started using Power BI to standardize and manage data better. Before Power BI, every department had its own tool to manage the data. This practice caused frustrating inefficiencies and data siloes. With Power BI, the agency could bring together and standardize the data reporting process. Staff could quickly fetch insights and deliver reports to help manage the rivers and creeks better.
- Real-time Visualization: An air pollution agency operating in four major counties with some of the worst air quality in the nation was able to preserve the health and wellbeing of citizens by utilizing Power BI. The agency was able to deliver live data visualizations and forecasts for poor air quality. Its users could drill down into the data at the locality level. The data was also set up to refresh frequently so the visualizations reflected actual air quality in real-time. The agency tapped into air quality trends to send timely notifications to citizens about days with anticipated poor air quality.
Transform Your Decision-making
The possibilities with Power BI are endless. AgreeYa has been helping organizations to fully harness the value of their data, enhance data exploration, and establish a data-driven enterprise culture by leveraging Power BI. We have enabled business users and data scientists to do their best work while empowering organizations to transform decision-making. If you would like to know more about Power BI or you’re unsure if Power BI is the right fit for your organization or you’re having troubles in getting started, reach out to us.