You’ve been working hard to gain access to your company’s data and set up Power BI Desktop on your computer, and now you’re excited to share it with your boss and convince him or her to use Power BI with your team!
However, you need some tips on how to do this effectively.
Look no further than these reasons that will help you convince your boss to use Microsoft Power BI in the future.
1. Ease of use features
Visualize your data within just minutes
With Power BI, you won’t have to rely on hard-to-schedule graphic designers to make your data beautiful ever again. After connecting your data sources to Power BI, you can immediately start using the drag-and-drop menu to build stunning visualizations.
Getting the answers you need is as easy as asking a question
One of the most exciting features of Power BI is its ability to interpret queries and questions phrased in natural language.
If you’d like to dive in further, you can keep refining and expanding your question until you’ve found exactly what you need-or realized what you were looking for all along.
In this way, Power BI helps remove any potential barriers to data exploration and promotes a culture aligned with data analytics.
Do you know Excel? Then being familiar with Power BI is easy
Within seconds, you can import the data from an Excel workbook or even upload the entire workbook itself.
You can then edit just as you would in Excel, with additional options such as the ability to drag charts to your dashboard or share the workbook with other Power BI users.
You can also use Power BI’s functionality to get extra value from your Excel data, such as by using it to create custom visualizations, editing it further with Power Query and Power Pivot, or combining it with still other data you have stored in Power BI.
2. Sharing and collaboration features
Seamless connection with hundreds of data sources
Power BI makes this easy by automatically connecting to hundreds of different data sources, as well as many more apps and services that your organization may already use.
With this level of flexibility, you can finally create a convenient way for your entire organization to view all its data under one umbrella.
For example, after connecting your CRM system and website analytics software to Power BI, you could create a graph directly comparing website visitors with your sales.
Dive further, and you could even correlate the average time a visitor spends on your website before making a purchase.
Share your data however you want
Power BI can not only transform the way you look at your organization’s data but also change how you share your new insights with your colleagues and even the broader world.
Everyone will be able to view, interact, and edit the same data as you do unless they have different permissions, in which case they will only be able to view authorized data.
With features such as these, even organizations with complex data sets and large numbers of employees will find it easy to promote a culture of sharing and collaboration.
3. Data security features
Flexible data access permissions
Because Power BI is already designed to connect to all your data sources, apps, and services, it can be used as a central filter to manage which information your organization chooses to make available and which it does not.
This level of specificity will even apply within those dashboards and reports so that users with different access levels will only see the data that they have permission to view.
For example, a healthcare organization with a mixture of private patient files and public information has the flexibility to set a wide range of access levels across data sources, users, and the reports they produce.
Empowering users with more control
Data governance refers to the overall strategy that defines who gets to view, edit, and share data, as well as how an organization’s access to data can best be used to further its goals.
Called a self-service approach, this strategy lets each unit come up with the most useful application for their data, and often produces much more creative and valuable insights.
It can bring together all your data and give you pinpoint accuracy over access permissions per data source, user, and individual dashboards and reports, it is the perfect tool for implementing a self-service data governance strategy at your organization.
The benefits of such a strategy can even go beyond the insights it will produce.
Advanced precautions to access data analytics via mobile
If mobile app usage is not essential, but still something you would like more control over, you can also use Power BI’s administrator controls to change permission levels, so employees can’t access business intelligence data over their mobile app.
This can be applied to certain data sets or reports, to specific users, or to any data sent to a mobile app.
Power BI gives your organization the flexibility to administer how you want your data accessed and distributed, no matter how specific your needs are.
Running data on the cloud securely
Although cloud computing is increasingly being accepted as the new normal for business, that does not mean it has suddenly become impervious to data breaches or attacks.
Because Power BI utilizes a cloud computing infrastructure, it was very important that it be able to handle heavy data loads with speed, security, and reliability.
To do this, Power BI is built on Azure, an extremely stable foundation that can prevent the unauthorized and unintentional transfer of information.
In addition, Power BI uses Azure Active Directory to store and manage user identities, as well as Azure BLOB and Azure SQL Database to manage the storage of data and metadata.
This means you can rest assured knowing your data will remain safe.
4. Premium features
There are no limits for your data
One of the primary benefits of Power BI Premium is that it comes with a dedicated server capacity for all your data.
With other versions of Power BI, users share the same set of machines when processing and analyzing their data.
This includes all the normal Power BI operations, such as data load and refresh, query processing, rendering dashboards and reports, and so on.
This not only allows you to tackle massive data volumes and enjoy better performance but also makes it even easier to share data insights with whomever you choose.
For organizations looking for more speed and volume for their data, it’s a perfect choice.
Keep your data wherever you want
Still, others may only want to move some of their data onto the cloud while keeping their most important or sensitive data on-premises.
Fortunately, just because Power BI Premium comes with dedicated server capacity, that doesn’t mean you have to transfer all your data from your own servers.
With this capability, you have complete freedom to choose which data you keep on-premises and which you decide to put onto the cloud.
Because you can also pin reports from the Power BI Report Server to the Power BI cloud service, you can create truly hybrid dashboards that use data from both your dedicated server and from behind your own firewall.
5. Cost advantages
It’s a good deal
Power BI is actually one of the most affordable business intelligence services on the market.
For instance, Power BI Desktop, which allows you to turn your data into rich visualizations, is already completely free, while Power BI Pro is only $9.99 per user, per month. In comparison, Tableau is $35 per user, per month, while Qlik costs $25 per user, per month for its Business edition.
Rather than charging a flat user fee, Power BI Premium is priced according to the monthly capacity you need.
Start getting value immediately
That said, your data is only as valuable as the story you can draw from it, and the way to shape the most compelling story is to view that data through as many lenses as possible.
Power BI can help you take a shortcut past costly data analysts and specialized software, and let you realize the benefits of an intelligent, omnichannel view of your data in as little time as possible.
6. Implementation advantages
Training your staff will take no time
Power BI was designed from the ground up to be incredibly easy to use, while still being a formidable business intelligence tool.
The team can use Power BI’s intuitive drag-and-drop interface to create data-rich dashboards and engaging charts and graphs, or they can take advantage of their existing knowledge with its built-in parallels to Excel.
Beyond this, Power BI features an extensive amount of educational information you can take advantage of, such as official guided learning and documentation, as well as plenty of webinars, training videos, and other resources-all of which are available for free.
Connect all your data in a few clicks
One of the most important functions of Power BI is its ability to seamlessly connect to a vast number of data sources, apps, and services.
Because this is integral to allowing you to quickly begin analyzing and interpreting data, it was essential that the process be as simple as possible.
After selecting the appropriate data sources and entering your credentials, Power BI will automatically populate a dashboard with your real-time data, allowing you to start experiencing its value right away.
Reasons to start using Power BI are already cited in this guide, but if your boss still needs some convincing, we’re here to help