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Microsoft Power BI

Benefits of Power BI

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Power BI has been growing in popularity over the past few years, but some out there might still be wondering why they should use this tool. Reporting within any organization is important as it can give look at the overall health and performance of your business, spot trends and potential problems and be used for forecasting future opportunities.

Features of Power BI

Power BI has too many features to talk about in one article, but here are the basics you need to know.

With Power BI you can connect to multiple sources and pull them together in a single report. This eliminates the need to piece together reports from multiple systems.

Available visuals, analytics and formatting capabilities allow reports to be extremely customized and provide ways to interact with the data allowing end-users the ability to dig into the results and look at it in multiple ways.

Using Power BI Pro data can be kept up to date with automatic refreshes. No more waiting for a month end report, you can see where you are at daily or even multiple times a day as long as data is being entered into the respective systems.

Now that we’ve reviewed a few key features let’s look at 4 benefits to using Power BI.

Saves Time

Gone are the days when an administrative assistant will need to manually run a report or gather the data and put it together in a single report for their respective teams. With Power BI once the connections are established getting the data can be as easy as logging into a Power BI Pro account to view current stats or, if not using automatic refreshes, it can be a simple click of the refresh button to pull in current numbers.

With the ability to drill down into data managers will no longer have to ask for more information in understanding what is feeding the numbers they can simply drill into a particular data point and get down to the individual transactions behind those numbers, helping them pinpoint issues.

Customizable Experience

Everyone has a certain way they like to see things and with Power BI you can avoid the hassle of creating multiple versions of the same report or trying to get everyone on board with one person’s viewpoint on how the data should be presented.

End-users can establish dashboards and favorites to easily navigate to the visuals they are interested in or be granted the capability to make their own reports from a dataset.

Security levels can be set so one report is created and end-users can be granted permissions to only see data applicable to them.

Higher End-User Buy-In

This is the hope of every report creator that their hard work and time will not be in vain by having a bunch of reports that no one really looks at or uses. With Power BI the ease of navigation, interactivity of reports and the ability to keep reports up to date have dramatically increased end-user buy-in when it comes to reporting.

Power BI Pro also carries the ability to see how many views and who is viewing your reports so you can quickly identify who may not be utilizing the reports and coach them appropriately.

Become Proactive vs. Reactive

Once you have end-user buy-in good reporting starts to pay off as you can make the switch from reacting and putting out fires to proactively changing course as you identify both positive and negative trends. If you are reviewing up to date data you can see a project starting to perform badly and take appropriate action in the middle versus waiting until the end of the project and just trying to do better the next time.

If you are interested in checking out these or some of the other awesome benefits of Power BI check out our library of webinars, other blog posts or reach out to schedule a demo of Power BI.

-Jerica Coleman, CRM and Power BI Consultant

GPUC 2020: Gain practical knowledge that can be IMMEDIATELY applied

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Join us Mid-November for K2A Day & GPUC 2020! These virtual events are filled with incredible learning and networking opportunities.

If you haven’t been yet, well, missing it would just be plain silly. Why?

6. K2A Day (November 16th and 17th) – With over 25 virtual educational trainings, including hands-on training and solution overviews, there’s a session for everyone. Learn more here.

5. GPUC: Great Plains User Conference (November 18th – 20th) –  Spend 3 days with our team of experts as we deep dive into 50+ virtual sessions. Learn more here.

4. It’s work and home friendly – five-days of fabulous content and networking!

3. Hone your skills and career with both events. Your brain will hurt.

2. All sessions yielding quality time with your peers and subject matter experts.

1.  Working with Great Plains is an exciting place, let’s get together to learn and grow.

We look forward to seeing you virtually!

Why Power BI: How to Get Started    

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Over the past few weeks we have covered quite a few reasons why Power BI is an important tool for any business. So the question left is not if you should start using Power BI, but how do you begin harnessing these amazing capabilities and make them work for your business?

Review Webinar Library

Take some time and watch previous Power BI webinars or register for upcoming webinars to gain some basic Power BI skills.

https://www.iscorp.biz/dynamics-gp-event-library/

Read Blog Posts

Take a look at other Power BI blog posts to gain insight on how to create reports on your own.

https://www.iscorp.biz/blog/

Download the Power BI Desktop

The Power BI desktop is free for all users and I highly recommend downloading this version, connecting to data and creating some basic reports. From here you can start to see how Power BI works and determine if you will need to purchase a Power BI Pro license.

https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/desktop/

** I only recommend this if you are DIY or learn by doing type of person as this requires more of a time investment. If you are looking for more complex analytics or to have an end report ready quickly one of the next two options is probably better for you.

Schedule Training

If live hands on training is more your style contact us to schedule either individual or group training. Training can range from basic end-user training to more complex report developer training. You set the goals and time allotted and we will create a training session based on your needs.

Have Us Create Your Report

It may be difficult to see how beneficial Power BI can be for your company until you have a report with company specific data or you may not have the ability to spend a lot of time creating the report yourself. With our experienced staff we can help you gather the data and create your first report either in concurrence with training or as a final deliverable.

Power BI can provide wonderful visuals and powerful analytics that can be used to monitor the current pulse of your business. If you haven’t already it’s time to start taking advantage of this tool.

-Jerica Coleman, CRM and Power BI Consultant

Why Power BI? Interactive Data

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Anyone that has ever done reporting for a company will understand all too well that everyone wants to see the data in a slightly different way. No matter how inclusive your visuals, unless you create a separate report for everyone someone will always ask if the data can be visualized a bit differently.

Because people absorb data differently there is no way a single report can satisfy or work for absolutely everyone. Power BI has quite a few features that allow you to create a more interactive report, allowing end users the ability to choose how to view the data.

Slicers

Slicers are filters that are placed within a report. These are based on a specific column within your data set and allows end users to filter what records they want pulled for the report visualizations.

In the above example we have four separate slicers: Sales Territory, Customer Class, Salesperson ID and Customer Name. With these filters an executive could keep all slicers blank to see overall company progress, a sales manager could filter to their territory, a marketing manager could filter by customer class or an individual salesperson could view only their data.

Drill Downs

Drill downs allow you to dig into your data by starting from an overall summarization and then expand into a defined hierarchy. A common use of drill downs is based on date, where the overall visual starts by year with the ability to drill into quarter, month and day.

These hierarchies can be created with any of the data points you have, another common one I see is going from division to branch to individual managers.

There are a few different ways to view your data in a drill down.

In the above examples the top chart is the original visual showing us information by division. A straight drill down allows us to select a data point on the chart to drill into the next level of the hierarchy. The bottom chart shows us the commercial division split by project manager.

In the above example instead of choosing a particular data point we expanded the chart to the next level, now we see all the data split by project manager without choosing a specific division.

In this final chart we have expanded all levels and we see multiple points showing the data by both division and project manager.

Drill Throughs

Creating a drill through page allows you to have more detailed information about a specific data point. Drill throughs can be used to dig into a particular record, like an individual job or customer, or they can be used to show different visualizations for a specific group.

In our first example we right-click on the individual job we want to look further into and choose the drill through which brings us to the second screenshot showing more data about the individual job.

In our second example we right-click on the data point for territory 2 and choose the drill through which brings us to the second screenshot with different visuals pertinent to that territory.

End User Report Creation

Another option for interactivity is to allow end users the ability to use the dataset you are sharing to create new reports. This will give end users more control over the report they see but keeps them using the same dataset you created to make sure everyone is looking at the same data.

To enable make sure the box is selected when sharing the report.

           

While this is a beneficial option it will require additional training for end users.

Using Power BI’s interactive features help give end users more control over how they visualize data and frees up time for reporting admins by eliminating the need to create many copies or different views of report data.         

-Jerica Coleman, CRM and Power BI Consultant

Why Power BI? Communication and Collaboration

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What are the primary goals of any reporting? In working with customers, I have found a majority are looking for two  things:

  • To be able to quickly visualize the overall health of their company.
  • To spot potential issues that need to be addressed and be able to communicate this quickly.

Power BI has quite a few features that allow for easy communication and collaboration within and outside an organization. The following features are available in the online version of Power BI which requires a Power BI pro license for each user.

Export

A huge benefit to Power BI is the capability to view reports online with multiple devices; however, some companies still need to present the reports in meetings or send as attachments with a proposal or project plan. The export function in Power BI allows you to present your report via PowerPoint, attach as a PDF document or print for handing out to others.

Share

Once a report is created it can be shared in two different ways, individually sharing the report or publishing to a shared workspace.

Reports and dashboards can be shared both within and outside an organization and you can choose if recipients will be allowed to further share the report or use the dataset to build new reports.

If you are creating multiple reports that need to be shared with a group of people it would be beneficial to set up workspaces for these groups. That way a report can be published directly to a specific workspace and all members of that workspaces would automatically have access to the report.

Subscribe

Some find it beneficial to be reminded to view a report or want to have the data sent directly to them. With the subscribe option you choose how often (hourly, daily, weekly, monthly) and when you want the report data to be emailed out. Each report or dashboard can have up to 24 different subscriptions.

Comments

The comments section works similar to social media, you can enter comments and mention people directly to get their attention for specific questions. Using comments eliminates the need to email questions and answers back and forth.

Share to Teams

If your organization uses Microsoft Teams on a consistent basis sharing your Power BI data within Teams allows you to discuss the data in a tool already being used.

Usage Metrics

Reports and dashboards are only beneficial if people are viewing them. With usage metrics in Power BI you can see how many times and who is viewing the reports. This can help you work with the teams on using the reports that have been created.

How quickly data can be shared, viewed and discussed is of paramount importance within any business. Power BI provides multiple options for communication and collaboration so you can find something that will work for the individual needs of your team.

-Jerica Coleman, CRM and Power BI Consultant

Why Power BI? Powerful Analytics

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Pulling together multiple sources of data is extremely beneficial, but what is that data telling you?

In order to have a proactive approach to business the data needs to be quickly analyzed to show trends, forecasting and potential issues that need to be addressed. Power BI has several analytical tools that can be leveraged within your report to help your data give an accurate picture of the business’s health.

Calculations

Power BI can perform basic and complex calculations at an individual row level with custom columns or in a larger grouping using measures.

Calculations can be used for a number of things, such as calculating weighted revenue, providing an order fulfillment percent, and comparing actual to budget to determine cost overruns. It’s easiest to think of calculations as a time when you would use an excel formula to compare or take action on an individual cell.

Measures are very similar to calculations except they work on a set of data versus an individual row. A perfect example of when to use a measure would be with averages. If you were to calculate an average at each individual row and then try to place an overall average on your report you would be viewing an average of an average. Whenever I want to group a calculation, similar to a SUMIF(S) or COUNTIF(S) within excel, I will use a measure.

Trend Lines

When visualizing your data it can be helpful to see trend lines. These are available to add with column, bar, line and area charts and include a constant line, min and max line, average line, median and percentile line. I most often see the constant line used for target performance and an average line to see overall performance compared to a target.

Key Influencers

Power BI Key Influencers use AI to review the data and determine what factors influence a particular metric. Key Influencers is a visual that can be placed on your report and can help explain what causes your metric to increase or decrease. Key influencers have proven to be very beneficial when reviewing employee turnover, project profitability and sales amounts.

Q&A

Power BI allows you to ask questions about your data and it will return a table or visual answer for you. While most report designers already have the visuals they want in mind when creating reports the Q&A feature is helpful for end users that may want to see more information or have other questions about the data they are reviewing.

Power BI has so many features that will help break down and visualize your data exactly as you and others need to see it. What a CEO needs to see is vastly different from a project or sales manager and Power BI can use the same datasets to create different reports and different analytics can be applied so end users see what they need to make their daily business decisions.

Looking to learn more about Power BI? Contact us today!

-Jerica Coleman, CRM and Power BI Consultant