We live in a data-centric world where data is more valuable than oil. But data in its raw, unprocessed form is useless. It has to be refined, processed, and streamlined to make it worthwhile. Businesses know this, so they opt for tools that can analyze data to make it worthwhile.
Power BI is one such tool that can help businesses achieve their goals. If you are in business, you have most likely heard of Power Business Intelligence.
But what is it really?
How can PowerBI help your business?
What are the significant benefits of Power BI?
Is Power BI the right Business Intelligence tool for your business?
And most importantly, is it only for large enterprises, or is it a feasible option for small and mid-sized businesses?
All these questions and many more will be answered in this post. Read on as we discuss the benefits of Power BI, how it is revolutionizing different industries, and how it can be the right tool for your business. But first, let’s start with what Power BI is.
Power BI is a suite of Business Intelligence tools by Microsoft. It helps you report and effortlessly analyze raw data by converting it into creative dashboards and appealing visualizations. Power BI is a cloud-based solution that is easily accessible through web browsers or mobile apps.
Power BI is owned by Microsoft, and it first debuted under the name of ‘Power Pivot’ as a free Excel extension. Microsoft added a bunch of other features to the tool and renamed it ‘Power BI’. Since then, it has come a long way.
This can be gauged by the fact that over 250,000 organizations use it worldwide. This number is even more impressive when you realize that over 97% of Fortune 500 companies use it.
Power BI offers powerful visualizations in the form of graphs, charts, maps, tables, and KPIs, which help users communicate insights from data in an interactive manner.
Power BI also offers advanced features like drill-through, cross-filtering, and data exploration, which are potent ways to discover hidden patterns in data.
Power BI Desktop: This is the free version of the tool. It can be easily installed on your computer to create and share reports for your business. It is the best option for single users.
Power BI Pro: This is the paid version of the tool. This cloud-based service allows you to do much more than the free version, including creating reports, embedding them with apps, sharing them, and even iterating them with other Microsoft Power BI consulting solutions.
Power BI Premium: This version is for large enterprises with several users. It has two options: Individual and Enterprise. The Individual Power BI premium costs $20 per user, while the enterprise subscription starts at $4,995.
You get several additional features on top of the regular features in this version, like maximum performance and an increased storage limit.
All these price points make it the top BI tool for businesses across the world, irrespective of their size. Power BI is the go-to solution for visualizing data from individual users to large enterprises with thousands of users.
Let us now see the benefits of using Power BI across different industries. While many benefits will be shared across industries, some of them are more specific to an industry and may be the most significant difference to it.
Power BI can help save costs in the finance and insurance industry in the following ways:
The data in the finance and insurance sectors can be massive, often requiring hundreds, if not thousands, of manual hours for reporting, analyzing, and compiling. Power BI automates the whole process, saving both time and money. These extra resources can then be used to perform other tasks.
In the finance and insurance sectors, risk is a huge factor and is, more often than not, the most significant contributor to losses. The predictive analysis of Power BI can be used to assess the risk involved in a specific transaction. This can then be used to manage risk more efficiently.
By lowering risk, eliminating manual reporting, identifying blockages and using Power BI, we ensure that the finance and insurance sector have much better operational efficiency. This saves considerable resources for the industry.
As Power BI is a cloud-based service, it eliminates the need for infrastructure and hardware. Thus reducing costs for the finance and insurance industries.
Power BI can help enhance patient care with real-time analysis in the following ways:
Power BI can help healthcare professionals monitor patients in real time. This can help detect any changes to the vitals and respond appropriately. This, in turn, will help prevent any further complications.
Time can be a matter of life and death in the healthcare industry. By tracking data like bed availability and patient inflow, Power BI can help the healthcare industry optimize its resources. This efficient allocation of resources will also decrease the waiting time for patients.
Using predictive analysis, Power BI can help identify complications before they even develop. This will help them protect patients from developing any severe complications and may even save lives.
Power BI can help healthcare professionals improve their service quality by tracking data like patient satisfaction. Putting real-time feedback into the loop will help the industry improve its service quality.
Power BI can be a great addition to the education industry. It can boost the industry in the following ways:
By analyzing student data like attendance and test scores, Power BI can help identify trends and patterns in student performance. This can help educators make data-driven decisions that will help them improve Power BI Implementation.
Data given by Power BI can be used to monitor a student’s progress. Why is this important? This will help educators intervene when a student is underperforming and has a poor academic record.
The institute can use financial and resource allocation data to improve the situation. It can be used to reduce costs and allocate resources better.
Know more: Microsoft Power BI vs Tableau – Learn the Key Differences
There are several ways in which Power BI can help manufacturers run their operations. Some of these are listed below:
Since data can be changed several times in a day with Power BI, it allows users to check real-time data. This data can be taken from existing sales and inventory data. This can then be fed into a dashboard to provide real-time visibility.
Manufacturers can avoid stockouts and reduce excess inventory by using the data from Power BI to manage the stock efficiently. This is done by extracting data like inventory data, production data, and demand forecasts.
Power BI can also help in quality control. Power BI can help manufacturers with defective products by feeding the correct data. This can then be used to ensure all the products are top-quality.
Power BI can ensure a smooth flow of products by identifying blockages in supply management and eliminating them from the system.
Here are the top 10 advantages of Power BI:
This is probably the most widely used feature of Power BI. It can produce interactive dashboards which can be customized according to specific business needs.
It comes with easy drag-and-drop options, providing a super easy way to create those reports. Data can be visualized in the form of tables, graphs, and charts in Power BI.
Microsoft Power BI uses advanced artificial intelligence, which can be used to do several tasks such as image recognition, machine learning models, and text analysis, and integrates with Azure Machine Learning. The AI feature simplifies Power BI and empowers users to create their own data analysis.
Real-time data is another huge benefit of Power BI. In some industries, like manufacturing and retail, time plays a more critical role than in others.
By leveraging real-time data, users can stay ahead of the competition, respond faster to changes, and make informed decisions based on the latest findings.
Data Modelling is the process of organizing data into a cohesive structure. This makes it easy to analyze and understand. Data modeling is crucial to creating powerful reports and visualizations with Power BI.
Users may build a comprehensive view of their data, which enables them to find insights and make wise business decisions by defining relationships, calculations, and aggregations.
Microsoft has extensive security features in place in Power BI to protect users’ data. Row-level security is one of the top features of Power BI.
It allows users to restrict access to data based on particular attributes. These unique attributes can be geographic areas, product categories, or regions. Besides row-level security, Power BI also has role-based access control, data encryption, and audit logs, making it very secure for use.
Additionally, Microsoft provides regular monthly updates that improve the security and functionality of the platform.
Power BI has many features, making it very accessible to everyone. With the help of these features, users may obtain data and reports and engage with them in various ways, enhancing their overall experience.
You can be anywhere, use any device, and still access Power BI if you have the internet. This is made possible because PowerBI supports all primary OS like Windows, iOS & Android.
Power BI provides several features that support collaboration. From allowing comments and discussions to reports & Power BI dashboards to mobile apps allowing users to collaborate on data analytics.
Power Bi is a fantastic tool for collaboration. This collaboration helps break down the silos and foster an environment of teamwork with shared goals.
A major reason why Power BI is not limited to just the Fortune 500 and is being extensively used by small and mid-sized companies is its pocket-friendliness. You can use Power Desktop for free or spend as little as $10 for a single user.
Additionally, when your organization sees growth and needs to scale, you only have to buy a more premium version of the platform. You will be all set for improved performance and additional storage.
Scalability in Power BI is easy, as it allows organizations to handle large volumes of data without compromising performance.
The cloud-based architecture of Power BI is suitable for handling such large data sets. You also have the option to upgrade to a higher version, like premium or pro, which allows your organization to scale quickly.
Power BI provides numerous data connectivity options to accommodate various data source requirements, guaranteeing users can connect to and analyze data from a number of sources. From Direct Query to Live Connection Power BI provides easy data connectivity.
It not only seamlessly integrates with other Microsoft products like Excel, Azure, and Dynamics 365 but also with third-party tools like Salesforce, Spark, Google Analytics, etc.
Read more: Understanding Microsoft Power BI – A Comprehensive Guide
Looking at all the capacities of Power BI, you may believe that it may be the perfect business tool for large enterprises but what about small and mid-sized businesses? Is Power BI of any use to them? Yes, they certainly are.
Microsoft offers Power BI pro for just $10 per user. It is excellent for someone looking to visualize and share data across the organization. Being a small or mid-sized business, you’ll most likely not need to tap into the full potential of Power BI.
This is something that your Power BI development company will also tell you, which is why you don’t have to pay the same amount as large enterprises for their services.
As a small and mid-sized business, you can still get all the benefits of Power BI, like data visualizations, collaborations, scalability, time savings, and cost savings.
Tapping the full potential of Power BI for your business largely depends on your Power BI development company. This is why, if you don’t have the right partner, you’ll only be able to scratch the surface.
This is where an experienced company with a proven track record like Arka Softwares will help you in your endeavor.
With their expertise in Power BI, they can help businesses of all sizes gain insight into their data analysis and make data-informed decisions. Here are some other ways in which Arka Softwares can be helpful to companies using Power BI:
Whether you’re starting with Power BI or looking to tap into its full potential, we can help you reach your Power BI goals. Get started with our free consultation call, and we’ll discuss your needs in detail.
Power BI can help you visualize data and take data-driven insights for your business, irrespective of your industry and the size of your business.
It provides benefits like data visualizations, data modeling, collaboration, and time and cost savings. It offers several unique benefits to specific industries.
In the finance industry, Power BI helps by providing data management, better risk management, improved operational efficiency, and reduced costs.
Power BI may aid in enhancing patient care with real-time insights by providing benefits like real-time patient monitoring and resource optimization.
It can extensively help in tracking and monitoring student’s progress in the education sector. This can assist educators in creating syllabi and curricula that keep in view the needs of the students.
You need to find a suitable Power BI Development company to ensure you not only scratch the surface of what Power BI can do for your business but also unleash its full potential.
Someone with the right expertise and proven track record, like Arka Softwares will most likely repeat their previous successful campaign.
Any industry which relies on data analytics can benefit from Power BI. This can be anything from healthcare to the retail industry, since they all rely heavily on data analytics.
Yes. Power BI can be used to automate business processes by integrating it with other Microsoft tools like Power Automate and Power Apps. By automating repetitive tasks, businesses can save on costs and increase efficiency.
Some of the major benefits of using Power BI are data visualization, real-time analytics, collaboration, automation, and cost-effectiveness.
Yes, Power BI is very secure. Microsoft Power BI implementation various security measures like two-factor authentication, encryption, and role-based access controls to protect users’ data.