What is Power BI and what are its benefits?

Power BI is a data analysis representation tool in the cloud, it is the piece that allows to show the value of the data through graphical representations and / or visual elements that allow what the industry is often said: "get the data to speak". To serve PowerBI there are different components in the cloud that allow the massive data manipulation process and make the information scalable, i.e. start representing data from a geographic area, but then can be expanded to an entire continent.

One of the advantages of this system is that it allows you to connect data from different sources and databases that are in the cloud or a local environment, using the catalog of components offered by Microsoft Azure, so that in each case we can build an optimal architecture. Once our data has been collected, cleansed, organized and structured, it is time to create reports with objects and graphs using PowerBI

In our years of experience we have helped several companies to implement this type of Power BI reports in their different business environments. Thanks to them, for example, a finance department can see clearly and accurately what their expenses have been in each of their "business units" and various financial indicators associated with those expenses, and filter them to see them visually, graphically and quickly. 

Another case we have worked on is that of a company that, before starting its digital transformation and implementing Power BI, did not know what expenses it had in certain aspects, such as executive travel. Having access to these reports in an agile way, they can know exactly what the expenses have been in that section, and even break down what part of it has corresponded to transportation, accommodation, per diems, etc. As we said at the beginning, "make the data speak".

Applicable to different business areas

It is important to note that Power BI can also be applied to other areas of the business, from finance to human resources, logistics, marketing, etc. In this line, one of our projects consisted of implementing this type of reporting in the sales department, to facilitate access to data and to be able to obtain product sales indicators - for example, Net Sales Value or Active Buyers - and view them graphically and at the click of a button, since they can be easily filtered by time window, by geographic region and by business division. 

This tool saves time and agility in business, as it can be processed much faster and can be applied to large companies, which work with an enormous amount of data on a daily basis. In addition, they can be kept up to date and even allow the addition of other data from sources that until now had to be analyzed separately. This opens up a new window of possibilities to take advantage of data that already exists in organizations, but which previously had not been exploited to their full potential.