Power BI - Turning data into business decisions
Power BI is more than just a reporting tool, it is a business intelligence platform, and it is continually evolving with new features and capabilities. Our Power BI consultants will help you get the most out of Power BI for your requirements, be that a self-contained dataset and dashboard or an enterprise wide business intelligence solution integrating data from across your business.
The dashboards are the visible front of your Power BI solution and must be kind on the eye, intuitive to navigate, enagaging and architected in such a way that the user is taken on a data journey, unearthing the stories of your data and drilling down to fine grain to answer questions rasied by your captivating dashboards.
Here we see a few different style of visuals, slicers and hierarchies that enable a 360 view of your business, but dashboards, their appearance and their purpose are unique to you and your business so our Power BI consultants will work with you to plan the right navigation and data journey, to find the perfect style of visuals to meet the objectives for you and your business, and to create a consistent theme across all of your reports and dashboards, whether that be colour schemes, page layout or slicer and filter styles.
Power BI Is More Than a Report Design Tool
Although many will see and use Power BI as a report and dashboard design tool there is so much more to the full Power BI platform. Power BI can be used to collect, cleanse, prepare, model and present your data as a single service solution, but this will not be appropriate, scalable or future-proof for all businesses. For a more enterpise solution Power Bi can complement other key business intelligence components such as ELT and ETL services, Cloud storage, Data Lakes, Data Warehouses, AI & ML services. Figuring out the best solution for you can be complex, but our Power BI experts have encountered most business and data challenges across a wide variety of business sectors and are here to work with you to architect the best Power BI solution for you. Microsoft Fabric solutions extend Power BI components to unify all your Business Intelligence needs in to one place and one platform - Data Factory, Onelake, Data Warehouse, Data Lakehouse all brought together in a single entity..
Which Power BI Architecture Is Right For You?
Our Power BI consultancy service combined with your knowledge of your business and your vision of what you would like to achieve from your data will provide you with the optimum data journey and solution for you. We will need to look at a whole host of areas including:
- what you have got in terms of the data you wish to get valuable insight form?
- Where is your data?
- Is your data structured, unstructured?
- How we can get your data?
- How much cleansing and preparation will the data require?
- What is the size and volume of your data?
- How frequently will you wish to refresh your data and reports?
- Do you have any data governance considerations?
- Do you wish to implement AI and ML services?
This is just a few of the key questions you will need to addres before deciding on the most suitable architecture for your Power BI solution.
Below we take a look at two possible Power BI solutions to address a Power dashboard requirement.
Solution Delivered Completely Within Power BI
Solution Delivered With Power BI Complementing The Azure Data Platform
Solution Delivered with Power BI and Microsoft Fabric
Building a Power BI Solution - Where do you start?
Start by contacting PTR and we can take you through your options for developing a data strategy solution that is right for you. We can assess your requirements and put together a per day or project based consultancy proposal to get you to where you need to be. It is vital that you see an early return on investment without committing to an extremely high budget and the best way to do that is to let us work with you to break your requirements down into manageable and affordable stages.
We are a big fan of Proof of Concepts (PoC) where we will work with you to choose an initial business process and Power BI requirement that can be used to test the water and gain stakeholder confidence. A POC can help you to:
- Prove a chosen data platform architecture as fit for purpose
- Educate and equip your team with the new skills they will need going forward
- Carry out sizing and capacity planning to assess the full cost and budget implications
- Provide a relatively quick set of results to demonstrate the potential Return on Investment and benefits of a well designed Power BI solution
Following a successful PoC the full Power BI and business intelligence roadmap can be planned. By looking at the long term goals we can pull out the key business processes that need to be brought in to the Power BI solution, and in line with your data strategy can build the roadmap and timeline to start the journey.
It will be a journey, and the direction may from time to time change direction as business priorities change, but with a strong data strategy and a well thought out Power BI roadmap these priority changes can easily be accommodated.
While considering your options for a Power BI solution it can be helpful to learn a little more about the platform and architecture choices available to you. Equipping your team with the knowledge and skills they require, and building their confidence to implement a successful BI solution is key to a successful project so you may also want to consider complementing consultancy and mentoring with training to help you answer the question "Where Do I Start?".
The diagram below shows a typical Azure Data Platform & Power BI architecture. Most organisations will develop a data strategy and then a roadmap that works towards all or part of this over time. Through our tailored data strategy consultancy service we can work with you to find the right solution and the right path for you.
Call our Consultancy Team on 0118 979 4000 or email them for further information.
About PTR
PTR have held Microsoft accreditation since 2005, currently holding Gold Partner Status for Data Platform and Data Analytics. We have been working with clients on Data Strategy, Analytics and Business Intelligence solutions for over 30 years across a wide range of platforms and vendor solutions. We pride ourselves on combining first rate technical skills with an ability to communicate complex ideas, technology, and data effectively, and working with clients to develop a deep understanding of their business processes and data objectives.
