Power Business Intelligence tool otherwise known as Power BI is a compilation of various software components connected together to transform unrelated sources of data into visually immersive coherent interactive insights from where we can draw out intelligence and a better understanding of patterns in the data.
The data source can be an excel spreadsheet, a cloud based data source or a combination of cloud and on-premise data. Apart from these hundreds of data sources from files ( 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.
Power BI creates actionable and interactive insights and information. It was developed by Microsoft and it combines business analytics, data visualization, and best practices features. The major benefit of Power BI is to help businesses make data-driven decisions through interactive dashboards and Business Intelligence reports.
Power BI is a phenomenal tool for organizations looking to launch, prioritize and grow their business through data-driven intelligence efforts. As a result, the Power BI advantages have made this Microsoft product one of the most popular data analytics platforms in the world. It has been named the Market Leader for the fourteenth year in a row.
Companies who understand and harness the benefits of Power BI and deploy it to perform ad hoc and real time analysis are able to take better decisions and efficiently too.
Where millions of data sets (rows) are involved and traditional tools like excel cannot perform the tasks of executing real time analysis to derive insights from data, Power BI becomes handy. Such task as comparing sale volume per region or performance of Sales reps over a period of time can be easily generated without so much effort using Power BI.
Looking at the dashboard, one will be able to see clearly which sales rep, for instance, over performed the other and who had a higher contribution to the overall performance of a region.
Power BI is made up of the following components:
- Power Query; Power Query helps to discover, connect, combine, and refine data sources to meet your analysis need).
- Power Q&A; Power Q&A is used to explore data in the fastest way to get an answer using natural language. For example, answers to a question like who was the best sale representative last year?
- Power Pivot; Power pivot is a data modeling technique to create models and establish relationship calculations.
- Power Map; Power map is a 3-D data visualization tool .
- 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 BI Desktop; Power BI desktop helps to get everything easily under the same solution to develop BI and data analysis experience.
These components are the reason why power BI is a very powerful tool as it is capable of doing heavy lifting and processing of data.
