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Power BI for Office 365 is Microsoft's latest Business Intelligence solution. It is cloud-based and works from within Excel and Office 365, to analyse and visualise data quickly and easily. The BI solution is designed to help business users gain insights from their data and, according to Microsoft, includes the following: - Power Query - Power Map - Power Pivot - Power View
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There is no shortage of data available today, with huge amounts of it being constantly generated by ERP systems, POS systems, PLC systems and Biometric systems, to name but a few. Companies are needing to find ways to effectively analyse the data, to leverage the information and make informed decisions, however many of the options available are very expensive and require a lengthy period of implementation, plus human natures makes most staff resistant to learning new systems so all in all, decision makers are faced with a challenge on many levels.
Excel has become the main tool for manipulating and analyzing data, and developing reports in business today, and with the release of Excel 2013, Microsoft introduced even more powerful business intelligence tools. To understand how the Excel Business Intelligence tools work together in Excel 2013, you need to understand the function of each tool and how it fits into the “traditional” Excel model. Extract, Transform, LoadPower Query is an intuitive, easy to use tool for importing, transforming and working with data. Data Manipulation. Data ManipulationSpreadsheets are the basic feature of Excel. Launched in 1985, there are now over 700 million Excel users worldwide. Tables were introduced in Excel 2007, they allow you to do quick sorting and analysis of your data. Power Pivot was introduced as a free add-in for Excel 2010, it gives you the ability to access, process and handle well over a million rows of data, more than a standard spreadsheet can process. PresentationPivot Tables are an easy and convenient way to build intelligent, flexible summary tables, allowing you to quickly derive insight from your business data. Pivot Charts enable you to visualize a PivotTable. You can quickly change a portion of data displayed, making PivotChart ideal for presentation of data in reports. Power View is an interactive data exploration, visualisation and presentation tool that gives you strong insight in to your business . So what is the bottom line?Before spending time and money on new data analysis tools, find out exactly how learning how to use all the Excel Business Intelligence Tools effectively will allow you to quickly and easily analyse your data and gain insight into it without any major resource investments. Over a billion people around the world use Excel today, far more users than any other BI vendor can claim.
Excel Power Query for Excel allows the Excel user to easily discover, clean, combine, and transfer data across a wide range of data sources including relational, structured and semi-structured. Power Query also provides you with the ability to perform online data searches to create powerful data mashups and create new intelligence from your data. Power Map is a new 3D visualization add-in for Excel for mapping, exploring, and interacting with geographical and temporal data, enabling people to discover and share new insights. This is the first video in a five-part series showing you how powerful the Excel "Power" tools are and how learning to use them can vastly improve your productivity, while at the same time giving you insight into your business far beyond anything you ever imagined. The business world has changed fundamentally over the past few years.The speed of change means that mangers need to be able to make decisions quicker, but at the same time need to be able to process far more data to be able to make an informed decision. Business today has no lack of data – transactional systems record every part of the business process. The key challenge for managers is how to turn the vast quantities of data into useful insight and information. In recent years new technologies has allowed vast quantities of data to be processed, analysed and increasingly visualised. The new technologies allow management to understand trends, identify outliers and to see new patterns in the data that could not be processed previously. Excel as a Business Intelligence Tool Excel has become the main tool for manipulating and analysing data, and developing reports in business today. With the release of Excel 2013, Microsoft introduced even more powerful business intelligence tools. To understand how the Excel Business Intelligence tools work together in Excel 2013, you need to understand the function of each tool and how it fits into the “traditional” Excel model:  How is this relevant to Business Users? If you work with Excel, using Spreadsheets and Tables to build reports, you probably find yourself regularly copying and pasting data between worksheets then clicking the same sequence of buttons to clean and shape the data. You’ve probably found that complex formulas, dirty data and inevitable errors take up a lot of your time, making month end reports a nightmare that consumes large portions of time you don’t have. Learning how to use all the Excel Business Intelligence Tools effectively will free you from the dull, repetitive tasks and give you time to focus on what’s important, analyzing your data and gaining insight into it. This will enable you to make good decisions about your business. |
