What is Power BI used for?

Power BI is Microsoft's suite of business intelligence tools for data analysis and visualisation. The service allows you to:

• Acquiring data sets from various sources,
• Cataloguing them and processing them,
• analysing the collected data,
• Creating interactive reports based on visualisation.

It is a tool that streamlines daily work on data sets, especially if they need to be collected from several databases and other sources and collated into one coherent report.

With Microsoft Power BI, it is possible to collate data and transform it into understandable information. For example, interactive reports allow users to analyse the collected material to improve company performance.

You stop getting lost in a jumble of unreadable information by using Power BI, visualisations, reports, and other options. You start to rely on complex data. 

Is Microsoft Power BI for you?

There are several variants of the service:

• Power BI Desktop,
• Power BI Pro,
• Power BI Premium (comes in per user and capacity options).

The first is the basic version, which you download for free. Thanks to this, you will know the service's functionalities and see what the interface and the entire Power BI working environment look like. You will see how easy it is to aggregate and process the data you collect.

Power BI services are designed for business giants and smaller companies seeking to automate work and better organise themselves. 

Small and medium-sized companies can successfully use the free versions to analyse and transform data. For larger companies, there are Power BI Pro subscription services. 

When is it worth implementing Power BI? You should invest in this tool when Excel and other similar programmes are no longer sufficient in your work. The Microsoft Power BI environment shows that professional information organization can be simple.

In summary, join the companies using the service if:

• You run a business and process data,
• You want to speed up the process of analysing information,
• You are looking for a tool with which you can quickly and efficiently create data-driven reports and visualisations. 
• You can run Power BI on your local computer and mobile devices. You will use the service, working on Windows, Android, and iOS. 

How do I get started with Power BI in my business?

To put Power BI Desktop to work, you must download the application.

Initially, you will be asked to select a data source from a list. A connection to the chosen database follows this. This gives you access to the data.

You can work on the resulting collections with the help of Power Query and Power Pivot.  

If the free variant of the tool meets your expectations and you want more, advanced versions await you. Subscriptions to paid services are available. With these, you can share reports through the Power BI platform. 

EBIS and the implementation of the Power BI tool

Working in the Power BI environment is intuitive and based on a drag-and-drop model, so no advanced coding knowledge is required. However, moving to BI from a spreadsheet like Excel may need specialist support.

That's why we at EBIS offer consultation and technical support for service users. Contact us, and we will advise you on the best solution.