Since its release in mid-2015 as Power BI, the software suite has attracted massive interest from a wide range of organisations looking to mine and analyse information. It has greatly improved the process of making decisions based on data.

Let's look at the benefits of choosing Power BI as your next business intelligence tool.

What is Power BI?

First, as you may already know, Power BI is a Microsoft product. As defined in their documentation, Power BI is a collection of software services, applications and connectors that work together to transform your disparate data sources into cohesive, visually immersive and interactive insights.

Within Power BI, you can manage all types of data, whether it is unstructured or structured information. For example, you can integrate Microsoft Excel spreadsheets or records from your own data warehouse.

The suite contains three core components (all three are interrelated). It is accessible in three ways: A desktop application available within the Windows operating system, a SaaS (Software as a Service) application called Power BI Service accessible online, and a mobile application.

We can also mention two other applications that can be essential for your business: Power BI Report Service for publishing your reports after creating them in Power BI Desktop. The second, Power BI Report Builder, is used to create paginated reports for publishing in Power BI Service.

Key Features of Power BI

What makes Power BI a great data analysis product is its core interface. You can easily drag and drop data sets for quick studies: previously mentioned Excel spreadsheets, SQL servers, or cloud services, you can also add data sources from any type of connection.

Power BI also has the ability to update your dashboards in real time, while integrating AI and machine learning capabilities for predictive analytics. Queries written in natural language are understood by Power BI, making it easy to customise the content of your reports, KPIs and other visualisation tools.

The software enables seamless sharing of reports and dashboards across teams, fostering a collaborative, data-driven culture.  Colleagues can view, comment and interact with shared content in real time, improving decision-making.

This collaborative environment ensures that everyone is aligned with consistent, up-to-date information.

Power BI as a powerful asset for discovering major insights for your business

In sum, Power BI has become a software to analyse data that can't be overlooked. Its ease of use for non-technical employees drove Power BI as a major opportunity to unlock insights for the performance of your business.

Over the years, Power BI has proven its value through its scalable pricing, which means you only pay for the resources you need. Whether you run a small business or a large organisation.

Microsoft provides frequent updates to Power BI, along with debugging tips from the community. Software benefits from integration with the Microsoft ecosystem.