For Power BI Project Managers – effective use of Microsoft BI system
You have implemented Microsoft Power BI and want to take full advantage of its capabilities?
You discovered that one of the Microsoft tools you have is Power BI and you would like to start using it?
You lack technical knowledge on how to set up this environment effectively?
Or maybe you already know it all and have a vision of covering all areas of your business with reporting?
If you answered yes to any of the above questions, take a look at our offer of Body Leasing and comprehensive support in the cost-effective use of the Power BI system.
Power BI – Body Leasing
Benefits: Hiring experienced consultants is a guarantee of the implementation of your project from scratch or bringing the ongoing work to the finish line. When time matters the most, you do not have to engage in the recruitment process, training, or certification. With our team, you can use time constraints to your advantage.
In the Astrafox consulting department you will find qualified, certified Power BI experts with extensive business experience. In addition to technical skills, they also have:
Knowledge from many lines of business, including FMCG, finance, automotive or pharmaceutical industry.
Operational knowledge of BI tools (e.g. related to migration from a different BI platform to Power BI).
Knowledge related to cooperation with organizations from the public sector.
We provide a flexible and secure cooperation model. We have a certificate confirming that the Information Security Management System in Astrafox complies with the ISO/IEC 2701:2013 standard.
Effective work with Power BI – our clients’ experience
Three factors are crucial in the implementation of the new analytical solution. In addition to the two obvious ones: price and quality, the experience of our customers shows that the third pillar guaranteeing the stability of the entire project is a reliable technological partner.
We have worked with various organizations that contacted us at different stages of their adventure with new technologies. If they were looking for help in resuming the project and bringing it to the finish line, then the reason for earlier failures was usually the lack of proper preparation at the initial stages of work. Having the right knowledge and tools, we help our clients estimate costs, secure and develop the right skills and support essential change management in the organization.
Power BI – getting started
When we have Power BI on board and we are building the first reports or we want to initiate a project to create new dashboards, it is worth considering whether we have the right resources to do so. Securing appropriate competencies and infrastructure is crucial for the timely completion of the subsequent stages of work.
Power BI – data visualization trainings
Almost every person comparing Excel and Power BI will notice an obvious difference in the approach to data analysis. Power BI offers a wide range of visualizations. They are the basis for knowledge transfer between the analyst and the business recipient. Even if someone previously created reports in Excel based on interactive dashboards, learning the principles of effective visual communication from the perspective of Power BI might bring very tangible results. In the end, a dashboard is not just about being technically perfect, but also about conveying clear information.
In our company, we believe that a good trainer is someone who has hands-on experience with a given tool. For this reason, all our trainers divide their working time between conducting training and development work. Therefore, your dedicated consultant may be a person who has previously trained your team, met your people and the business context of their work.
Power BI consultations
If your team has the right competencies but needs help putting them into practice, then cooperation with our consultants on the ongoing projects will be the right form of support. The scope of the consultations is flexible and tailored to your needs. For example, it may be:
🔸Comprehensive construction of the report together with workshops, where we provide knowledge about how it was created along with documentation.
🔸 If your team builds reports, consultancy sessions once every few days, along with a review of the completed work and advice on the following steps;
🔸Conceptual workshops in the field of visual communication and selection of appropriate forms of visualization for the presented data along with the required indicators;
🔸 Dedicated Q&A sessions.
Power BI technical training for Analysts
One of the most frequent mistakes at this stage is the assessment of the competence levels of the report creators based on their prior work in Excel. Extensive experience might also involve some habits that could be utilized in a more suitable way. Therefore, an important step in the initial stage of work is to properly train your analysts.
The experience of our company and our clients shows that the basic training of analysts with an extensive Excel background helps them separate their previous habits from the new technology. As a result, they quickly start using their knowledge more effectively where it is needed and they avoid building work patterns that are not optimal for the new solution.
Why Power BI?
Power BI is one of the best data reporting and visualization platforms on the market. It is gaining popularity since companies managing data based on Microsoft technologies (like Azure or SQL Server) consider it a natural step towards obtaining business-relevant information and presenting it to a large audience.
Of course, Power BI’s technical aspects and the idea of working with tools created by one company are not the only reasons why Power BI is becoming more and more popular. It is also important to consider the attitude of report creators towards the applications they will use in the future. Analysts with extensive Excel experience often start searching for an appropriate BI tool within the environment they are already familiar with.
Power BI offers a wide range of data visualizations that can be combined on interactive dashboards. Reports are then created using data from virtually any source. Two components, also known from Excel, are responsible for joining, modeling, and data transformation: Power Query and Power Pivot. Power BI is increasingly integrated with Microsoft’s existing tools, including those from the Azure environment. One of the important novelties in the area of data modeling support is the implementation of the Power BI Datamarts in the Azure Synapse service.
