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8 Major Benefits of Microsoft Power BI You Must Know

Having the right business intelligence at your fingertips is crucial in the drive to become agile and competitive. As businesses grow, it becomes increasingly difficult to manage data being generated regularly. With a siloing effect and biased reporting structures, it leads to the decision makers in business to make their judgement on data that may be inaccurate or else incorrect altogether.

Microsoft have brought to the fore their analytics tool – Power BI, the reporting tool that allows enterprises to easily visualise and analyse their data to transform their operations.

Microsoft’s Power BI is a cloud-based tool that requires no initial Cap Ex or infrastructure support regardless of the size of the business. Just like any Microsoft Cloud Services, implementation of Power BI is rapid hassle free.

 

Here are a few valued competencies of the Power BI Tool:

Integrates effortlessly with your existing applications.

Power BI can plug straight in to your existing business environment allowing you to adopt the analytics and reporting capabilities

 

Feature rich personalised dashboards

The feature everyone is talking about with Power BI are the information dashboards which of course are customisable to adapt and meet the requirements of any business.

 

Publish reports securely

Here you set up an automatic data refresh and publish reports so that multiple users across the business can take advantage of the latest information.

 

No memory or speed constraints

Transferring an existing BI system to a powerful cloud environment with Power BI Embedded eliminates memory and speed constraints ensuring that the data is quickly retrievable and analysed.

 

 

No specialist technical support required

Power BI’s provides agile inquiry and analysis without the requirement for technical support. Because of the powerful natural language interface and the use of intuitive graphical designed tools.

Extracting business intelligence accurately and rapidly

It helps in transforming your enterprise data into rich and attractive visual representations, therefore extracting business intelligence for more enhanced and informed decision making.

 

Balanced simplicity and performance

The in-memory analysis technology and DAX scripting language are both exquisite examples of a balance between simplicity and performance.

 

Supports advanced data services

Power BI can be integrated seamlessly even with an advanced cloud services framework. Providing the results for the verbal data query using natural language.

 

 

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Planning the learning journey for a new user of Office 365

Moving to Office 365 and migrating your desktop to the Microsoft Cloud is nearly always a move in a positive direction for any business. There are more applications available, faster and more collaborative ways to work and communicate, slicker and easily accessible portals but has anyone spared a thought for the end user? They must learn, adopt and become a proficient user without affecting productivity.

In our experience, the end user is often the last factor to be considered when a business undergoes the migration. How do they feel about the decision made by the business to make the software upgrade?

When any business undergoes periods of change there will be a sense of uncertainty. Feelings of hesitancy amongst the staff and its up to the leaders  to address these issues before they become concerns.

Time and again, the trusted pairing of business training and managerial support will see any project through to its delivery and eventual execution.

Following this are the key areas in which a business needs to address in order to ensure that the emotional and practical needs of the workforce are met, and the business delivers on their employees’ expectations.

 

COMMUNICATING THE CHANGE

 

Moving to the Cloud with Office 365 could be a major change to how they work depending on what they do. A solid communication plan and effective change management in place are critical to deliver the smoothest transition possible.

Communicate why this is happening and keep all staff informed of the milestones of the journey and the dates in question when it will be taking place.

WHAT SHOULD EFFECTIVE END USER TRAINING LOOK LIKE?

 

My colleague asked me, ‘what exactly is Microsoft Office 365’ and I always say, ‘it’s simply anytime and anywhere access to cloud based email, calendars, websites and office applications securely’.

I usually get the responses of, ‘really, I thought it was more complicated and technical than that, how will this affect me?’

To address this, the business would have to provide a comprehensive training program to ensure all users know their responsibilities when using Office 365.

The best approach to this is to use a blend of practical instructor lead workshop. Here delegates will be shown how to access and conduct a variety of tips and functionalities in order to maximise adoption of Office 365.

The training should foster an inclusive and safe environment where all delegates learning is considered. Training is then supported with plenty of time allotted for questions, demonstrations and practice.

POST TRAINING SUPPORT

 

Many training providers fall into the trap of not providing enough floorwalker in the post training phase of Office 365 deployments. This extra degree of support when users are in a ‘live’ environment can be the real difference in meeting the expectations of end users. It also guarantees a smooth transition as users embrace and fully adopt the new technology.

By always keeping in mind the emotional and practical needs of the people during a period of major change, with the right layers of support, end users will eventually start using the technology to its full potential allowing the business to prosper.