There was a time when business intelligence solutions were mostly for big businesses...

There was a time when business intelligence solutions were mostly for big businesses...

(Jorge Gonzalez*)

Large companies have armies of IT technicians to install and maintain a business intelligence solution. And they have plenty of time and money to get a customized system up and running.

Large businesses would then be capable of pulling data from many different silos and combining it into meaningful charts and graphs that produced great business insights.

But what about the businesses without the budget to afford a large scale business intelligence system or the staff to maintain it? How can you combine data from, say, your retail, bookkeeping, and other solutions to discover insights that could help you make more informed business decisions in the future?

Enter Microsoft Power BI, the MS Excel rich cousin that hands to put business intelligence in the hands of every business.

According to Jorge Gonzalez, principal of Vermis Analystics,  “Power BI is a business analytic offering that provides a 360-degree view of any business.”

1. Your Data all in One Place

Microsoft Power BI pulls key business metrics and data together in one place. “You have a view of the data across multiple systems. You don’t have to jump into each of those systems to see how that data is tracking. It’s a time-saver to have it all in one place,” he said.

One of the biggest benefits of Microsoft Power BI is that it can pull in data from various applications, so the business owner and managers can see it in a single application. It can pull from your own systems and from spreadsheets, as well as third party services.

“It doesn’t really matter where that data’s coming from.

While each software application like QuickBooks may have its own analytics and reports built into it, according to Jorge, “It’s a hassle to have to do in deep managerial analysis like customer churn rate or inventory turnover.

MS Power BI is very interactive and explorative. The fact that I have a single pane of glass that I can see all my data through, but also explore that data and interact with that data, is a very unique value proposition as well,” adds Gonzalez.

2. More Holistic View of Your Business

You can blend and mash up the data for greater insights when it’s in a single place. Mashups start to become really important because, if your data is siloed, then you can’t see everything in that silo view of your data.

“Combining information from multiple different sources gives a more holistic view of your customer base. Because if you understand what your customers are doing online as well as how that marries up to your internal systems for your own specific customers, you can get additional insights,” Jorge said

3. Access it From Anywhere

“I can stay on top of my business when I’m out of the business,” says Jorge.

Microsoft Power BI not only works on Windows and Windows mobile devices, but it has native apps for iPhone, iPad and Android. It also includes mobile collaborative features.

“As an example, I’m in Starbucks and I’m scrolling through my iPhone and I’m looking at five different dashboards. And I see one and I’m really concerned about it. Right from that app I could email Bob back in the office. I can annotate a screenshot of that dashboard. I can request that he take a look at this number and write him a little note and then just send that off. That’s all built in. That workflow is thought through,” says Jorge.

Free and Pro Versions

Microsoft Power BI has a free version and a Pro version.

The Microsoft Power BI Pro version, at $9.99 per user per month, offers more storage space with faster data response, and deeper collaboration features. Microsoft Power BI Pro adds 10 GB of data capacity (versus 1 GB for the free version), refreshes data hourly (versus daily for the free version), and streams up to 1 million rows of data per hour (versus 10K for the free version). Pro adds full data interactivity with live data. It also adds more collaboration features.

Gonzalez who will be conducting in the coming months FREE workshops to explain how this technology works, says that there are three main advantages to  businesses with Microsoft Power BI.

*Jorge Gonzalez is the co-founder and principal of Vermis Analytics, an Analytics consulting firm, which helps organizations to compete and win by using data.  Jorge is an ex-IBMer who has provided consultation to multiple fortunate 500 companies in his 15 years of analytics career.  He has a MBA Degree from Pennsylvania State University and undergraduate degree in Finance and International Business from Florida International University