Business analytics in the form in which it currently exists in Ukraine can no longer satisfy business needs due to the growth of a large amount of data (Big Data), which can no longer be processed without automation.
Companies that, due to the specifics of their activities, generate a large amount of data (banks, retail, FMCG, logistics, IT, insurance companies) were the first to face this problem. This list also includes companies that have collected a huge amount of information during their long-term presence in the market (construction, agribusiness, pharmaceutical industry). The collected information is usually stored in various stores and forms and it is difficult to analyze and process with the usual tools, such as 1C, Excel and Google Sheets.
At the same time, this unstructured and raw information (the so-called “raw data”) is the company’s greatest asset. Thoughtful and competent processing of such data leads to the transition of the business to a qualitatively new level, increasing profits by several times due to the understanding and ability to manage business processes that affect sales growth, the number of shipments and orders, customer loyalty, operating costs reducing, etc., which, therefore, makes it possible to control and manage such processes.
Thus, the implementation of a business intelligence system completely changes the concept of company management: as a rule, most business manuals give recommendations on resolving crisis situations, while the implementation of the Microsoft Power BI integrated analytical platform will unite, systematize and streamline all management and analytical reporting of the company, will allow you to automate the analysis and visualization of data from various sources (1C, internal and external databases, Excel, Google Sheets, any other sources), which means it will allow you to monitor data changes online and respond to negative trends in a timely manner (in advance).
10 reasons to switch to Power BI
Thanks to the development of modern technology, there is no need to evaluate basing just on human memory and intuition. Today, there are Business Intelligence (BI) tools for collecting data, analyzing it, and presenting reports in a beautiful visual form. Understanding of the need to integrate BI tools with business processes is gradually increasing, as its application gives companies a great competitive advantage.
Microsoft Power BI is a comprehensive tool that transforms disparate data sources into consistent, visually compelling, and interactive analytics. Whether your data is in the form of an Excel spreadsheet or a collection of cloud and local data stores, Power BI makes it easy to connect to these sources, uncover and visualize what matters most, and share the result with anyone. The reasons why you should choose Power BI are as follows.
- Competitive advantage in decision making
A large amount of data, different sources and mismatched software versions do not allow presenting disparate information in a whole and comprehensive way for business leaders and business partners using standard tools.
The Power BI analytics platform allows you to turn raw data into a clear and specific report presented in the form of visualized charts and graphs in the desktop, cloud or mobile version of the platform.
This information, submitted in a consolidated form, will allow the business to make decisions that provide competitive advantages and prevent the development of negative scenarios: loss of financial resources, uneven load on the enterprise’s capacity, transport or personnel.
- Quickly identify the reasons for falling profits and adjust business activity
Launching a new product or service always has significant risks, so even with careful planning, the result can be unpredictable. Even well-established processes, due to changing external circumstances, demand, market conditions, can produce unexpected and financially painful results for the business.
How to identify the causes of low sales, customer churn, falling profits? By moving to the Power BI automated analytical platform, companies are able to track the development of processes and identify gaps and causes that led to a negative result — without any effort on their part, since the analytical process is fully automated.
Moreover, by seeing the shortcomings and taking measures to correct them, the company can immediately see how effective they turned out to be, thanks to the constant updating and displaying the results in live mode.
- Lost profits or losses that might not have happened
Companies that report profit and loss every month rarely think about the fact that profits could have been higher, but also there could not have been losses.
With an automated analytics system in operation, a company can monitor bottlenecks and potentially unprofitable activities, optimize resource usage, reduce costs to the minimum sufficient to achieve results, and control their costs.
- Insights
One of the main benefits of implementing Power BI is understanding what to do next and identifying patterns (insights) that are based on concrete facts, not speculation and assumptions.
Thus, the pieces of information and data of the company, collected together from various sources and visualized on interactive panels, makes it possible to identify negative patterns and strategies that have been repeated for many years. Without analyzing and receiving reports in a convenient visualized format, a company may not even realize that the applied business strategy is ineffective or is leading the company down. In addition, thanks to clear and timely reports, the company’s management can get practical ideas for changing the negative situation.
The implementation of an analytical platform allows you to identify negative patterns and develop really effective strategies that bring the company to the top in its segment.
- Drill down (flexibility in reporting)
As a rule, most companies have a fairly typical reporting structure:
- periodical: annual/quarterly reports;
- profile: P&L reports, etc.
Reporting in this format does not allow you to delve into the data, make it detailed by various parameters, and respond flexibly to a management request for additional information.
The Power BI analytics platform allows you to customize almost any in-one-click drill-down, changing its parameters and visual representation, providing flexibility in work and faster decision making. This approach helps to see new meanings in seemingly well-studied and understandable data, defining new strategies and vision for the company’s development.
- Data quality improvement
One of the significant problems that prevents businesses from qualitatively analyzing data is that the analytical culture in Ukraine is just beginning to take shape.
A large amount of inaccurate, incorrect data entered into the databases, sometimes simply missed and partial, does not allow for high-quality analytics with standard tools. When implementing a centralized analytical system, such as Power BI, data in most cases can be brought to a unified format that is convenient for analysis and visual presentation.
- Access to information – anywhere and instantly
Unlike manual data processing, an automated system instantly processes all the information and produces a beautiful, clear and concise visual report that can be discussed at meetings with business partners or when planning further business. Access to these reports can be given to anyone who could not directly participate in the discussion, who has a smartphone or computer.
- Different levels of access
Leaders and managers need access to all the organization’s data at any time, even when they work away from the office. Accessing information should be the easiest part of data analysis. Each employee of the company can be assigned their own access level according to the created rules. This allows the employee to get access exactly to the extent that it is needed.
- Flexibility in choosing the type of report
Power BI makes it possible to create targeted reports for every need and not to load the manager with reports for analysts, and analysts to generate reports with more detailed information.
- Scaling
As a rule, the development and expansion of the company is associated with an increase in the volume of reporting and the traffic of documents sent between different departments. Gathering information and creating reports are becoming increasingly complex.
In the case of a centralized analytical system, this issue is solved by connecting to additional data sources and automatically visualizing new data, and not by new sessions of communication between employees, which are completely unnecessary in this case. A system that can grow with the organization is critical to fixing a problem like this.
Features of Power BI analytics tools
Proper business decision-making is possible only if you have all the necessary and up-to-date information about the company’s activities. Often, such information data is limited to annual and quarterly reports. Such reports do not give a complete picture and may lead to incorrect decisions. In order to obtain timely and effective analysis of their activities, enterprises are increasingly implementing BI systems that improve the work of the company and lead to new successes. The best data analysis tool presented by Microsoft is Power BI, which consists of a set of software services and connections.
The Microsoft Power BI suite includes the following components:
- Power BI Desktop is the most popular among the tools for obtaining data from various sources (online services, gateways, etc.) and their further processing (creating data models, developing reports) according to the tasks set.
- Power Bi Service is an online shared service for publishing and sharing reports, and for collaborating with customers or partners.
- Power BI Report Server is an on-premises company server that has the same capabilities as the Power BI Service.
- Power BI Gateway is a service component that is required to connect and provide access to on-premises data in secure corporate networks.
- Power BI Mobile is a built-in mobile application that allows you to view reports and dashboards on your smartphone, tablet, PC (Android, iOS, Windows).
- Power BI Embedded is an API that is required to embed visual components in applications installed by a user.
With these applications, which provide interactive, dynamic, and mobile access you can connect to business-critical data anytime, anywhere.
Implementing Power BI will enable you to perform the following tasks with your data:
- Processing data received from the company’s databases about the work flows of the business and structuring this data into a unified form.
- Detailing all the information after analyzing all the work issues that affect the success of the business.
- Development and modeling of own formulas, metrics, indicators and KPIs, which allows you to control and analyze the necessary parameters for managing a company.
- View all reports and dashboards on-premises, using the Power BI Service, or through the Power BI Mobile app.
- Providing separate access for employees with different levels of access.
- Using the server facilities of the Microsoft cloud to automatically process the required amount of data.
Solutions offered by TechExpert
We offer:
- development and implementation of a consolidated system of analytical and management reporting based on the MS Power BI platform;
- organization of connection and access to any data sources (1C, CRM, any databases, Excel, etc.);
- setting up analytics according to the specified parameters and to corresponding different levels of access for company employees and displaying visualized data on dashboards;
- training employees to work with analytical reporting in Power BI;
- advice and support during the further use of the system.
All settings of Microsoft analytical components are carried out with a guarantee of the information security of the company’s systems.
In the integrated Microsoft Power BI service, company managers themselves will be able to enter up-to-date data, improve the quality of information thanks to business intelligence services, and learn how to offer their services or products more profitably on the market.
This is the visual presentation of a company’s data after displaying the results of the analysis on the dashboard:
For detailed recommendations on integrating Microsoft Power BI, please contact our analysts.
