POWER BI: SELF SERVICE REPORTING BI FOR EVERYONE

The primary objective of self-service reporting is for employees, such as business executives, to get the data insights they need to help drive a decision. This gives them the ability not only to consume a report, but also play around with the dimensions of a report or create a new report so it becomes a little more ad-hoc. This captures the BI dream.

 

Are you using Microsoft Dynamics AX, Dynamics 365 CRM, or Dynamics 365 FinOps? Do your employees have spreadsheets with data such as financial data, budget data or employee data?  Well, creating your own Corporate Data Model will combine all your company data in one place so there is a signal source of truth. This Corporate Data Model can be made securely accessible to everyone in the organisation, or even your partners, vendors, or customers to help with collaboration.

I am frequently asked about how can I make reports more accessible to employees, and not just reporting analysts. It’s the same billion-dollar question Microsoft have been trying to answer for many years now, and their recent releases are very compelling.

Traditionally, reporting and BI (Business Intelligence) systems were consumed and created by the IT department. With the advent of the web, Microsoft 365 and the Power BI service, these reports became available online to help recreate a report-driven, and more importantly, a data-driven culture.
But still the problem of BI persists, for example:

1. Employees barge IT staff with requests to build a report that will suit their teams’ needs.
2. Employees not getting the latest data in their reports, impacting their productivity.
3. Busy executives not being able to fine tune reports and dashboards they are consuming.
4. Company KPIs, such as quarterly sales per customer values, are not consistent across reports.
5. Reports and dashboards do not have a consistent look and feel.
6. The need to access live data to get the latest insights.

 
As it turns out, Microsoft’s Power BI cloud solution is the world leader in terms of solving these business challenges, according to Gartner research:



Microsoft Power BI supported around 250,000 companies around the world, which includes 97% of the Fortune 500 to drive a data culture. These companies increasingly select Power BI to enable everyone (not just executives) to make data-driven decisions, and become a data-driven culture.
 

If you'd like to learn more about Power BI capabilities and what it could do for your business, get in touch with us today to discuss your requirements and how to get started. 

Email Fiona - f[email protected] or call on 0415 870 135