Posted on: May 10, 2017
Greetings, Power BI enthusiasts, and welcome to the conclusion of our three-part series on Microsoft Power BI – what it is, how it works, and how to get the most out of it. As you might have guessed, we have saved the best part for last. After covering the basic building blocks of Power BI and how to find answers and information with the Q&A feature, it’s time to take a look at tips and tricks for getting the most value out of Power BI so that you and your business can thrive.
Part 3 – Maximizing Power BI’s Value
Knowing the basics of Power BI isn’t enough to give you a solid return on your investment. Take a look at the following tips and ideas for getting everything out of Power BI that you possibly can:
Automation
If you and your team are still extracting, transforming, loading, and/or visualizing data manually, you’re wasting a lot of time and subjecting your reporting to an increased risk of human error – and the possibility of skewed data. Power BI eliminates these issues by enabling you to automate these processes, so take advantage of this feature in order to save time and guarantee accuracy.
Extend Licensing
Don’t limit yourself or your business by only allowing a handful of people to have access to Power BI. Power BI can provide valuable insights to executives, directors, managers, and teams of all levels of experience and understanding, so consider extending your licenses to a larger variety of user types for more insights.
Stop Redundancy
If you have multiple teams working on a similar project, it’s easy to come up with a whole bunch of redundant reports that take up room and cause confusion without adding any real benefit to your business. Power BI makes it possible for your teams to stay connected and collaborate, reducing redundancy and allowing everyone access to the same, unique report.
Standardization
Don’t fall prey to problems associated with departmental discrepancies in how to manage and work with data. Power BI streamlines the reporting process by allowing you to standardize your reports. This will improve the quality of information sharing throughout your organization as a whole.
Create for Your Audience
When you’re using data and dashboards to generate reporting visualizations, you need to be sure that your audience (your colleagues and possibly even your clients) are able to understand what they’re looking at. Having the ability to understand and interpret information is the key to making sound decisions for the business, so this is mission critical. When going about this process, then, you need to begin with your audience in mind. Don’t put a single detail on a dashboard that isn’t something that your readers may need or have the ability to understand.
Keep It Simple
Dashboards exist so that information can be shown to a user at a single glance. This means that to get the most out of Power BI, you should be working to keep things simple by having all tiles on one screen. Use only the tiles that are necessary to convey your message, avoiding scroll bars and clutter at all costs.
Size Matters
If all of your text and visualizations that appear on your dashboard are of the same size, people will have a hard time figuring out what’s most important. When you have information that is really critical, make it obvious by making the most important stuff the biggest stuff. It’s also helpful to put this information in the upper corner, as this is where people will look first.
Well, there you have it! Now you have all of the information you need to dig into Power BI and change the way you make business decisions. Interested in learning more? Feel free to reach out to the experts at Uncommon Solutions anytime.
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