How to maximize value and insights from Microsoft Power BI

Enjoying a scenic drive on a warm summer day offers an opportunity to enjoy the picturesque views ahead of you, and maybe even where to stop to take the best pictures. While the windshield of the car provides a view of what lies ahead, the rearview mirror allows you to look back to see where you’ve been. However, you can’t drive the car looking through the rearview mirror. Getting the most of out of your business data is similar. In this blog post, we’ll look at how to maximize value and insights from Microsoft Power BI to ensure a clear path forward for your organization with data-driven decisions.

Maximizing value with understanding the past and the future

Collaborative, unified planning allows you to look ahead through the windshield to clearly see where you are going. A clear view of performance allows for long-term strategy development and increased collaboration between business functions. Your organization’s historical data provides you a solid view of what has been happening in your rear view mirror which provides for reporting, analysis, and more. Being able to see where you’ve been and understand the past while also looking forward creates the opportunity to maximize the value of your data by creating a streamlined process across your organization that provides even better insights.

Combine reporting, analysis and planning

For organizations already using Microsoft Power BI for their business analytics, implementing a modern planning solution that offers seamless integration with Microsoft 365 maximizes the value and insights from your existing Power BI investment. To create a holistic view of performance across the organization, utilize the very same data you use for business analytics for unified planning and budgeting to optimize value creation and avoid the dreaded data silos. Even the most sophisticated Business Intelligence tools were not designed for planning, budgeting, and forecasting.

Power BI used anywhere within the business can be leveraged for better planning, better insights, and better decisions. Analysis of your historical data with a forward-looking planning approach allows you to fully maximize the value of your data and the insights derived from that data. It gives you what you need to “look ahead” through your windshield and plan for the future.

With increasingly dynamic global markets, a data-driven culture continues to grow in importance for businesses of all sizes and sectors. Combining Microsoft Power BI and a modern planning solution enhances spreadsheeted data by easily transforming and visualizing it — enabling all team members get better insights and drive better decisions with up-to-the-minute analytics, driver-based planning across business functions, such as finance, sales, HR or Sales & Operations (S&OP) and seamless integration with other data sources such as ERP or CRM. Leading-edge technology with native access to planning data in Power BI also makes it easy to query, prepare, and utilize planning data for analysis and visualizations.

Learn more about how to maximize value and insights from Microsoft Power BI in our eBook, “The Forecast is Clear for the Future of Finance.”