Microsoft Power BI
What is Power BI?
Power BI is the Business Intelligence (BI) tool of Microsoft. It can be used to visualize data from nearly all kinds of data sources. Power BI is an extremely powerful tool. It can hold huge data volumes and can handle the most complex of calculations. When it comes to visualization, there are nearly endless possibilities.
Power BI reports are developed in Power BI Desktop and are then published to the Power BI Service, from where they can be consumed from a browser or mobile app.
How well does BI Samurai know Power BI?
Most BI Samurais work with Power BI on a daily basis so we have solid knowledge and know our way around the tool. We all very much enjoy working with Power BI because there are so many possibilities and it's simply amazing what can be achieved. So yes, we are real Power BI experts. But, we also have to rely on each other and on the Power BI community, simply because the product is evolving rapidly.
Microsoft is constantly implementing new features in Power BI. Power BI Desktop is updated almost once a month and in the cloud-based Power BI Service, there are even more updates.
What kind of companies should use Power BI and why?
Every single company should use Power BI!
We're 100% serious about this. It makes sense for every company to use Power BI. How exactly it is used, depends a lot on the size, complexity, data volume, and other factors. But in general, even a one-person company needs to know how the business is doing. Every company has data that makes the life of managers and operational people easier if they have easy access to it.
Compared to other tools, Power BI is very cheap and there are even ways to use it for free but with limited capabilities.
Also, once a report is set up correctly, it doesn't need much maintenance and just does its job which is to always show the most recent data to the people that need to see it. The use of Power BI can also drastically reduce the time spent with the manual creation of reports in Excel. It can also be fully integrated into PowerPoint presentations, making them up-to-date and interactive as well. Because it just works, once it's set up, small companies don't need to hire Power BI experts or set up a complex IT infrastructure.
For bigger companies, it makes even more sense to use Power BI. The fact that it can be used to build reports from all kinds of data, be it finance, marketing, HR, production, sales, logistics or others, makes it an indispensable tool.
What kind of Power BI services does BI Samurai offer?
We've done big enterprise-wide implementations, helped start-ups to set up just one simple report and also mentored many clients during their Power BI journey. Also, our clients come from all industries and locations. So, we can deal with any kind of Power BI project. We have published a list of some of our clients and projects and are proud that many of them keep coming back to us.
How can we start a Power BI project and how long does it take to have the first report?
Every project is different, so there's no generic answer to this question. But our way of working is that we always try to get things done as quickly as possible. We don't prepare a lot of nice-looking slides first but we want to see your data, load it into Power BI and actually get started. The best way to kick things off is with a friendly chat in one of our "Getting to know BI Samurai" meetings.
Power BI sample reports
Power BI Switzerland Championship
With this report, BI Samurai Pascal took part in the official Power BI Switzerland Championship which was organized by Microsoft. The main focus in this specific report wasn't on data analysis but rather on showing different Power BI features. Scroll down on the first page to see how to work with this report and then take it for a spin.
Financial Report with Zebra BI
Life Insurance
BI Samurai George is an expert when it comes to working with data from insurance companies. In this showcase reports, which contains 9 pages, he included many of the tricks he learned over the years and the outcome is a fantastic report. Even though we don't specialize in a specific industry, having profound knowledge of an industry makes Power BI implementation projects much easier because it allows us to be on the same level as the business users on the client's side.
International Football Report
In the text above, it is mentioned, that every company should use Power BI. But actually, Power BI can also be used for other topics. BI Samurai Sheb for example, likes to create reports with data about football.
Covid 19 in the UK
During the Covid pandemic, analyzing data became a much more important role. All of a sudden, the entire world was collecting data about Covid cases, the number of vaccinated people, etc. Every news channel in the world was talking about these numbers. BI Samurai Ben has been part of it and has developed a report which shows the development of Covid in the UK
Microsoft Dynamics Sales Reporting
As mentioned above, Power BI can connect to nearly any data source. The report below is loading data directly from Microsoft Dynamics. BI Samurai Brahim has built it in a way that with only a few clicks, it can be connected to a client's environment. Would you like to give it a go? Let us know and we'll make sure you can connect the report to your system.
Financial Report
Analyzing financial data is an important discipline. To be able to properly do this, having a background in finance can come a long way. BI Samurai Frank is a finance and Power BI expert and has built the sample report below.