Easy collaboration in Power BI
In Power BI, collaborating and analysing large amounts of data is easy. The online data platform provides insight into the large amount of data and provides the tools to make figures predictable and transparent. There is one truth in which everyone works together and this can be done online. Working from home? That is no longer a challenge. Excel? Throw it in the trash! But just a platform or service is of course not enough, there are still a few steps involved. But how do you do that?
Selfservice BI
When we start with a BI project, we see a number of stops. We start with research: what is and what is not available in terms of insights? Then we determine the end goal. Of course it is important to know which sources are needed to achieve the goals and which insights are desired. We are a strong supporter of self-service BI in which you use the power of your employees and their knowledge of the business. If you want to get from a centrally organized BI or a spider web of Excel files to self-service BI, a number of stops are necessary. And good to keep in mind: security. That’s a very important part of self-service BI (for more information, see: Unraveled: Sharing datasets between workspaces – Dynamic People).
Let’s develop!
After the analysis phase follows the development phase. Here, we unlock the already available data sources to Power BI and at the same time we add sources that have not yet been unlocked. Combining these sources often takes place in a data warehouse. This is simply a database in which different sources come together in a form that the data can be compared with each other. But it can also be a lot more efficient to do this in, for example, Azure Synapse. The benefit you get from this is that a lot of data more quickly available is (the choice of this often depends on the amount of data, the number of sources and the budget). A data warehouse is certainly also important for self-service BI. In the data warehouse you can transform the form of the data on which users see which data. For example: the tables with clear names and columns are not shown technically, but functionally (isocurrency code to currency).
And… Design
When data becomes available, we start designing reports/dashboards. This already happens parallel to the development phase (a nice time-saving 😉 ). For good insights, it is important not only to show the data, but to tell a story so that the user of the analysis immediately understands what they are looking at. Giving an explanation to the reporting users about how Power BI works is very important. This ensures acceptance and trust in the reports. And when all this is in place, it is time for the customer to get started with it themselves. Playing with the data yourself: what else do you want?!
Also throw Excel in the trash?
You can! A lot is possible with Power BI and the Power Platform. Are you curious about its possibilities? Please contact us via sales@dynamicpeople.com or call +3120 303 24 70. If you prefer to follow an exploring training first, that is also possible! We offer free beginners training, or training for the more experienced users (these are at a cost). Check out our full agenda on the event page.