What is Power BI?
Many of you are either familiar or have heard of either Tableau or Microsoft Power BI.
At one point Tableau had advantages over Power BI, but with recent changes to the licensing structure for the Microsoft line and updates, (almost weekly), Power BI can do just about everything Tableau does. This all at the same time when Tableau drastically raised their pricing after being purchased by Salesforce.
Over the past 8 or so years, I have had the opportunity to work with dozens of State and County Departments to help implement custom dashboards and create customized classes.
During some discovery calls, I have customers say, “we’re going to utilize the Microsoft training first since it’s free. If we need something additional, we’ll contact you” or “we just want a 1-day class on how to build dashboards.”
I’m never disappointed, and always respond with something like, “No problem. We appreciate the opportunity to have talked with you and please keep us in mind for future classes”.
Fast forward a month or two later, I get a call they have exhausted the free Training from Microsoft as well as learn at your own pace options, which in no way satisfied their learning needs. Most equate it to the lack of labs or just the amount of information covered and connecting the pieces.
Ultimately, they still need training. We then work together to create a class, often times modifying the PL-300 class and it’s always a hit.
Well, it’s no surprise. What the heck is Power BI? Often, people think it is just an extension of Excel. They already know Excel so it should be an easy transition.
Not so fast. Power BI is actually a full suite of products/tools in Microsoft’s Business Intelligence line.
I thought I would give a very brief explanation below of what Power BI is.
Microsoft Power BI is a tool that helps you turn your data into easy-to-understand visuals and reports. It has three main parts: Power BI Desktop for creating reports, the Power BI service for sharing them, and Power BI Mobile apps for viewing them on the go. You can also make detailed reports with Power BI Report Builder and publish them on your own servers with Power BI Report Server.
Additionally, Power BI integrates with various external tools like DAX Studio for optimizing queries, ALM Toolkit for application lifecycle management, and Tabular Editor for advanced data modeling. It works with tons of different types of data and helps you see trends and insights clearly. With Power BI, you can make smart decisions based on your data.
Power BI is currently being implemented in many departments. If yours is one of them and you’d like to learn how we can help, or if you simply want to have a conversation to learn more about it, feel free to give me a call!
Have a great week. Let me know if this was helpful.
-Kris Crawford