17 Solid Reasons to Incorporate Power BI into your IT Roadmap
From compliance to pricing Microsoft is offering straight-forward information, empowering companies to make fact-based decisions. We’ve listed 17 reasons to incorporate Power BI into your strategic IT planning.
Why you need to Incorporate Power BI into your IT Roadmap
1) Built by Microsoft
Microsoft has been one of the biggest names in enterprise-grade IT technology. With Microsoft behind Power BI, it means they put all their top-notch resources, time & history into building it. Of course, this also means their capabilities are connected. There will be a continued improvement over the years to come. For more detail go to the official MS Power BI Blog to view all the latest updates.
2) Power BI is Free
Not many things in life are free, but Power BI certainly is. The free version of Power BI can be downloaded on their Get Started page.
They have two alternative options which aren’t free if your organisation has to share & scale – Power BI Pro, for self-service BI and Power BI Premium which caters more to big data support, on-prem & cloud reporting.
Check out their pricing here.
3) Available on mobile
Having Power BI available on your mobile means you are always in the know with regards to the movements of your organisations’ data.
Reports can be customised for mobile view and the app is downloadable on any device.
Learn more here.
4) Moving up, faster
According to the Microsoft Power BI website, it’s one of the “largest and fastest-growing business intelligence clouds”
Microsoft has also been recognised as a leader in BI Platforms and Analytics by Gartner’s 2020 Magic Quadrant
Read the full blog here.
5) Excel integration
Connect and share Excel data with Power BI Dashboard. Connecting Excel data to a Power BI Dashboard enables you to apply your existing skills to a new tool for automated refreshes, more options with custom visuals and better flexibility in terms of ad-hoc analysis.
Take a look at the video of how you can build excel sales reports in minutes.
6) Governance & Protection
Power BI data can easily fit into your organisation’s protection & governance policies. Microsoft Cloud App security blocks user activities that can be seen as ‘high risk’ in real-time. Sensitivity labels can be applied as in Office 365 apps such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook to Power BI.
Administrators can also track and monitor employee activity with regards to company data.
7) Power to IT
“If we can’t protect people, then we don’t deserve their trust.”
– Brad Smith, President and Chief Legal Officer
Microsoft is transparent and clear allowing IT managers to make informed decisions when considering Power BI as their companies BI-tool. Comply with your companies standards by making knowledgeable decisions based on security and compliance with Microsoft’s Trust Centre.
8) Azure
Azure is cloud computing. This lowers cost, allows scaling, higher security and improved productivity. Read more on Azure here.
Using Azure with Power BI will lead to a decrease in the time to insights with a no-limits Azure data lake.
9) Impressive customer stories
Making a list of Power BI facts are great, but if you want to understand the impact Power BI has in large organisations check out their impressive Customer Success Stories, and prepare to be amazed by companies such as Aston Martin, Adobe, Hewlett Packard, Meijer and many more.
Read the Microsoft Power BI Customer Success Stories.
10) Education & Learning
There is no way that Microsoft will leave you hanging in this department. With Guided Learning, Samples and Documentation you’ll have all you need and more to master Power BI.
Read More: 7 Reasons to use Microsoft Power BI
11) Weekly & Monthly updates & the Power BI Community
Power BI is constantly improving & growing. Power BI users receive updated weekly and monthly communication for all changes & updates to Power BI. Their ideas & updates are influenced by the Microsoft Power BI Community. This allows the Power BI team to push their innovations to go beyond client expectations with ideas submitted from community members worldwide.
Learn more about the Microsoft Power BI Community.
12) Self-Service Analytics
Giving the power to individuals within an organisation to analyse their data reduces costs and complexity while enabling a company-wide scale.
Learn more on Microsoft Power BI.
13) Large Library Visualizations
Power BI has hundreds of visuals for you to choose from when creating a report. There are also more visuals available from AppSource.
Find out more about visuals within Power BI.
14) Create Visuals
Can’t find the visual that fits your needs? Build your own with the custom visuals SDK, based-on JavaScript libraries such as D3, jQuery and even R-language. Your custom visuals can be shared or delivered to clients with AppSource
Read more about custom visuals.
15) Automate workflows
Workflows can be automated within Power BI with Power Apps and Power Automate enabling a faster response on insights.
16) Real-time Analytics
Power BI allows real-time analytics so no decision is made based on outdated data. This data can be from factory sensors to social media sources.
Read more on Why Power BI.
17) KPI’s & Data Alerts
With Power BI your KPI’s can easily be tracked & measured. Custom alerts can then be set-up in your reports to notify you should you reach a specific target, or an amount decreases or increases to a specific amount. This allows teams to be in the know and make informed decisions
What are the key points you consider when planning the IT Roadmap for your company? Let us know in the comments below.
To learn more about the above topics read our basic Microsoft Power BI Overview or visit Microsoft Power BI
