The whole business world runs on data. After all, data defines so much for every company — including SMBs. We all make our decisions based on data, so being able to understand that data is vital.
Data visualisation is one of the best ways to make data digestible. Rather than a bunch of numbers and statistics, data visualisation is the act of turning data into graphs, charts, and other visually appealing displays of data. One of the best data visualisation tools is Microsoft Power BI, which will help take your organisation’s data visualisation to the next level.
In this article, we’re going to go over five use cases for Microsoft Power BI, so you can understand how it can be used to help your organisation prosper.
Use Case 1: Financial Performance Dashboards
Being aware of your organisation’s finances is vital to its success, and Microsoft Power BI lets you create full dashboards to visualise your financial performance.
However, these are more than just simple charts. Unlike a traditional spreadsheet, Power BI can connect to live data sources from anywhere — from CRMs to ERPs, and even accounting software. From this, you can take advantage of real-time insights and data transformation, meaning you can easily react to any changes in your financial performance as soon as they happen while knowing the data is clear and accurate.
On top of this, Power BI makes sharing data easier than ever. You just need to publish your financial dashboards to the Power BI service to share across your company across all departments, meaning you can be more transparent about your finances far more easily. Plus, Power BI updates your data automatically through real-time data — meaning that you don’t need to spend time generating reports manually.
Use Case 2: Sales and Marketing Analysis
Data visualisation is vital in the world of marketing and sales. After all, being able to analyse your sales data and use that to inform your future decisions will help bolster your success.
Power BI can be used to enhance this, by helping your marketing and sales teams work more consistently and efficiently. This is because Power BI lets you both bring together data from various sources that would be traditionally difficult to connect, and also cleanse and consolidate said data to ensure consistency and accuracy.
On top of this, you can use Power BI to track performance and identify trends that may have been previously missed, letting you create better business decisions to ensure continued success. But, Power BI goes further than this — letting you take advantage of calculated columns and ratios, to find advanced statistics such as customer acquisition cost and return on investment for marketing campaigns.
Use Case 3: Supply Chain and Inventory Management
Supply chain and inventory management is vital for any organisation that needs to keep track of its stock. After all, knowing what you have and where it came from is vital for so many reasons, and being able to use that data is also crucial.
Microsoft Power BI is great for this, as it lets you connect lots of different data sources together. From ERP systems to warehouse management systems, and even supplier data, you can create a unified view of all of this information in one place, meaning you don’t have to go between your different data sources to be able to get useful data.
Power BI also gives you real-time insights into your inventory level, stockouts, and surpluses. This means you can always be aware of what’s happening with your inventory, as well as letting you track order fulfilment progress — meaning you can proactively react to supply chain disruptions and minimise delays.
Use Case 4: Customer Service Analytics
Any customer-facing organisation needs to make sure that customers are satisfied with your service. Power BI can help you with this, by ensuring that you can be aware of your customer service performance at all times.
Power BI can help bring together a unified customer view, using data from various surveys to give you a 360-degree perspective of customer interactions, meaning you can understand their needs and pain points better.
On top of this, Power BI has an extensive suite of data analysis tools that will help you identify trends in your customer service data. You can easily uncover frequently encountered issues, analyse your customer sentiment over time, and pinpoint specific areas where your organisation needs to improve.
Use Case 5: Project Management Tracking
Project management is one of the most important things for any organisation that has projects under the hood. While Power BI isn’t primarily a project management tool, it’s still great in this field and can be a great companion with its data visualisation and analysis capabilities.
You can break down data silos from task management software, spreadsheets, and communications platforms, and unify them within Power BI. This will let you access that data far more easily, and take advantage of real-time dashboards within Power BI to be able to make use of that data and see key project health metrics.
Moreover, the data visualisation features within Power BI can help with problem-solving and prevent bottlenecks, helping you keep proactive with your projects. You can also allocate resources with this real-time data, meaning that you can use Power BI to gather the data to supercharge your projects’ success to meet their full potential.
How We Can Help
Microsoft Power BI is a powerful data tool that is incredibly useful and versatile. These use cases demonstrate just how flexible and essential Power BI is, and why you should be using it inside of your business right now.
If you’re looking to get started with Microsoft Power BI but don’t know where to begin, reach out to us today. Our experts are here to provide you with a helping hand and will make sure that you have the support that you need to take advantage of the power of Power BI.
Get in touch with us now and see how we can help.
