Power BI, the best BI tool?

Five reasons why Power BI can become the leading BI application on the market

Power BI is Microsoft's take on an application for data analysis from, for example, Dynamics NAV and can easily become the leading Business Intelligence tool on the market. Here are five reasons why.

1. Custom visualizations

You are not limited to the visualizations that are already a part of Power BI, but can also use the custom visualizations that are available in Office Store and on other websites. That way you can almost certainly find the visualization that suits you. The living user community of developers ensures that more and more customized visualizations are being developed.

2. Ongoing updates

Power BI is continuously updated. Additionally, the updates includes features based on end-user requests from the Power BI Community portal. Microsoft actually listens to end users and gives them exactly what they need.

3. Integration and sharing

Power BI is integrated into Office 365 and is therefore highly compatible with the Office 365 applications, such as Excel. However, what in particular makes Power BI a powerful Business Intelligence solution, are the options the tool provides for sharing information across the different solutions in Office 365.

4. Data sources and modeling

Power BI has multiple data sources as well as a quick analysis tool that analyzes a particular dataset and then returns the valuable insights using Machine Learning.

The data modeling settings displayed after loading the data set have gradually improved significantly in Power BI. It is now possible to create complex relations between tables, add columns and rows, import from one table to another, add, filter and much more.

5. Costs

It is especially on the price that Power BI differs significantly from its competitors. Power BI is included in Office 365, but if you do not have an Office 365 license, a Power BI license is definitely also affordable. One must therefore assume that Power BI in the future will become the preferred BI tool for small and medium-sized enterprises.

Conclusion

There are already very good BI solutions available on the market, but from a commercial point of view, Power BI may prove to be far more efficient than its competitors. In addition, Microsoft's ambitions and continued efforts to improve the application makes Power BI a very interesting Business Intelligence tool, especially for small and medium-sized businesses.