To see all your data in one place – from a general overview to individual records – you need a multipurpose dashboard. This is where Microsoft Power BI comes into play, by offering a modern way to manage and visualise your organisation's data. Power BI connects to almost any data source for real-time data import, and enables the creation of user-friendly dashboards that support smarter decision-making.
Let's take a closer look at what Power BI has to offer.
Clear visualisation of your data
Using Power BI, you can make your organisation's data more accessible by creating dashboards that people at different levels and in different roles can easily understand. You'll help everyone to stay better informed and ensure they can more easily keep track of the data that matters to them.
You can, for example, create at-a-glance views that give senior managers the overviews they need for strategic decision-making, while enabling other colleagues to drill down into the detailed figures that support everyday operations. There's no more laborious extraction, filtering or sorting of data: dashboards put the right information at everyone's fingertips.
Different dashboards for different user groups
To create the most useful dashboard for each target user group, you need to understand what they need to know. The managing director's requirements, for example, will probably be very different from what his or her direct reports need, as the volume, nature and level of data needed for informed decision-making will vary by user group.
So, while the MD may want a high-level overview of all the organisation's data, the logistics manager will need a detailed view of the subset of data that will help get orders delivered to customers as efficiently as possible.
Well structured data models are the basis for effective analysis
For many organisations that rely on Excel, a major challenge is that data tends to reside in silos. To get the full picture either requires a lot of resources – or simply doesn't happen.
Migrating to Power BI can help to overcome this challenge. Power BI is compatible with almost any data source. So you can import data into Power BI from your enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM) and other systems in real time, process it and display it in meaningful visualisations that show the current state of play. Allowing your data to do a much better job of supporting your business operations and ambitions.
Sounds good, but not sure where to start?
If you have a Microsoft 365 licence, Power BI is included as part of the Microsoft Power Platform, allowing you to create dashboards. If you want to share the dashboards you create, you need to add a Power BI Pro licence (or higher).
Having the right licence is one thing; having enough skills, time and resources to get properly set up with Power BI is another. If you need support to organise your data sources, import your data from other systems, or create appropriate dashboards for your target user groups, it's worth reaching out to a certified Microsoft partner, like Konica Minolta.
Our Microsoft experts can help you rationalise your data and get proficient with Power BI so you can make the most of its dashboarding capabilities for data analysis and insights. and smarter business decision-making.