Microsoft Power Business Intelligence (BI) is a tool specifically designed to drive digital transformation for increased profitability and growth. The primary opportunity of using this tool lies in its ability to transform data gathered from various sources into actionable insights for more informed business decisions down the line.

Today, there is a large volume of information being generated and accumulated in multiple data silos. This makes it increasingly difficult to properly manage, process, and visualize the information. Over time, this will lead to stagnant data that won't provide any real strategic benefit to the organization.

When correctly implemented, Microsoft Power BI is able to convert this data and provide enhanced organizational performance, competitiveness, agility, and overall effectiveness. So, how does it work, exactly?

How Does Microsoft Power BI Suite Work?

Power BI is a cloud-based business analytics solution that provides several tools necessary to access and turn vast amounts of siloed data into accessible and relevant information. The data can be used to understand the various industry and business-specific trends, outline patterns, and bring new business insights into the spotlight. With the interactive dashboards provided by Power BI, decision-makers can filter and explore previously unknown opportunities that go beyond simple reporting.

The platform requires no capital expense investment or additional infrastructure support. This is regardless of the size of the organization. It's also free from any legacy software restrictions, and users don't require any specialized training to start using it. Power BI can be broken down into three main components:

• Power Query - to extract and transform
• Power Pivot - to model and analyze
• Power View and Map  - to visualize data

That said, here are the platform's top features and benefits.

Power BI Features and Benefits

• Customizable Dashboards - One of the platform's prime features is its customizable information dashboards. These can be personalized to fit the needs of every organization. What's more, BI reports can be embedded into these dashboards to enhance the user experience. Furthermore, users can combine on-premise and cloud data into a single view, thus allowing them to better monitor critical information coming in from all company-wide applications.
• Seamless App Integration - Another major benefit of Power BI is its easy integration with both legacy and other business applications. This will help provide enhanced analytics and reporting capabilities. Also, it allows you to better leverage all available data without any added complications. Some such tools and applications include Google Analytics, Azure, Excel, Microsoft Teams, MailChimp, GitHub, SharePoint, etc.
• Enhanced Security and Access Control - With its row-level security, Power BI allows companies to assign access rights at different levels. This not only provides better data security but also increases the general usefulness of the reports. For instance, a report created by a master user can be viewed by other users based on their access rights. This makes the creation and management of reports much cheaper, easier, and effective.
• Interactive Reporting - The ability to embed BI and analytics in the app will help deliver both interactive reports as well as geo-map localizations. These are powered by Bing Maps.
• Great Product Roadmap - Power BI has numerous expansive features that can be added as the company progresses through its BI journey. With constant enhancements and monthly release cycles, Microsoft monitors feature requests, prioritizing those most requested by users.
• Ease of Use - Probably the most important benefit that Power BI has to offer is the fact that it's simple to use. Even basic users with limited knowledge will find the tool seamless and with a short learning curve.