Business Intelligence Archives - Page 3 of 5

Shashank Dharasurkar
September 01, 2022
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Top 5 Power BI Dashboard Examples to Get You Started

When it comes to using data to its fullest, one thing that comes to everyone’s mind is data visualization. After all, data visualization is what helps display and understand the data better and use the same to make informed decisions. That’s where Power BI comes in. Power BI is an impressive tool using which you can create an interactive, visually immersive, and dynamic dashboard and make the most of your data. Want to learn more about what Power BI actually is and how you can use it to unleash the power of data visualization? Read along. This blog discusses what Power BI is and lists Power BI dashboard examples that you can use to visualize data in different domains within your business. Also, you’ll learn some tips to create your custom dashboard using Power BI dashboard examples. What is Power BI? Power BI is a Business Intelligence tool from Microsoft similar to Tableau, using which you can create interactive and actionable reports and dashboards. With Power BI, you can pinpoint issues and tell a story using the dashboards and understand data effectively. Also, Power BI allows you to source data from sources that aren’t a part of the Microsoft ecosystem. That means you can use any data source to input data into Power BI and get a coherent and interactive dashboard ready. What is Power BI Dashboard? You can think of Power BI dashboards as visualizations or templates that update on their own when the data supplied changes/updates. Because of development functionalities, you can drag and drop visualization widgets on the canvas and create a custom dashboard without writing a single line of code. Common Power BI dashboard examples include the finance dashboard, sales dashboard, cost optimization dashboard, and a lot more. More on this later in the blog. What is the Difference Between a Dashboard and a Report? Dashboards help visualize specific aspects of an organization. While you can include any number of data sets, dashboards work best when you focus on a particular area. Also, using dashboards, you can visualize and organize the data in real-time. On the other hand, reports have a broader scope because of which they offer a high-level view of the entire organization. However, reports are static and represent a snapshot of a particular area or the entire organization. What’s Better? Well, dashboards are optimal for BI and analytics needs, especially when you want to focus on different business aspects such as customer segmentation, finance, sales, etc. You can check in real-time how your products are performing and draw an action plan accordingly. Top 5 Power BI Dashboard Examples Here are some of the best power bi dashboard examples: 1. Finance Dashboard Who is the Dashboard For? The finance dashboard is for executive-level employees who want insights into an organization’s financial data/performance. As an executive-level employee, you can find high-level insights that make scanning the entire dashboard pretty easy. What’s more, the finance dashboard allows you to dig deep into granular metrics if you find an insight worth exploring. What’s the Purpose of This Dashboard? The purpose of the finance dashboard is to offer the users a high-level view of your company’s financial performance. Users can check out the financial performance over time by product category and location. What are the Key Insights of This Dashboard? The finance dashboard is one of the best power BI dashboard examples that offers the following key insights: 2. Sales Dashboard Who is the Dashboard For? The sales dashboard is meant for sales managers to help them read sales data in an interactive manner. What’s the Purpose of This Dashboard? The purpose of the sales dashboard is to help sales managers understand how their business is performing. You can get an overview of the sales along with all the granular details corresponding to each opportunity. As a sales manager, you can determine the aspects where you need to focus to meet your sales targets. What are the Key Insights of This Dashboard? 3. HR Dashboard Who is the Dashboard For? As the name tells, the ideal audience for this Power BI dashboard is HR managers who want to keep track of the demographics of the employees. What’s the Purpose of This Dashboard? The HR dashboard offers insights such as average age, duration, and salary. And the purpose is to help HR managers learn more about their employees and understand them better. It’s also meant to assist the entire HR team in ensuring that the company has the employees it needs. What are the Key Insights of This Dashboard? 4. Marketing Campaigns Dashboard Who is the Dashboard For? Yet another important power BI dashboard example is the marketing dashboard. It’s meant for marketing managers who regularly launch campaigns and want to track how the campaign performed. What’s the Purpose of This Dashboard? The purpose of the Marketing campaigns dashboard is to determine the effectiveness of marketing campaigns across different product segments & channels. And using these insights, marketing managers can tweak their campaigns to improve their performance. What are the Key Insights of This Dashboard? 5. Customer Segmentation Dashboard Who is the Dashboard For? The customer Segmentation dashboard is meant for companies dealing in the B2B domain. It’s meant for senior managers who want to analyze the customers closely. What’s the Purpose of This Dashboard? The customer Segmentation dashboard is one of the best Power BI dashboard examples meant for senior managers. It’s because by using this dashboard, senior managers can visualize revenue coming from every individual product. They can also visualize & determine which product is doing the best and which isn’t. What are the Key Insights of This Dashboard? Now that you know about some of the most popular Power BI dashboard examples let’s learn how you can create a similar Power BI dashboard for your business. Tips for Designing a Power BI Dashboard 1. Consider Your Audience Always consider keeping your ideal audience in mind while designing a Power BI dashboard: For instance, if it’s a

Nandeesh Reddy
August 24, 2022
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How to Export Power BI Dashboards using Power Automate in 7 Steps

Microsoft Power Automate formerly Microsoft Flow, is a tool for automating processes and tasks by connecting different applications and platforms. It is a low code or no-code application where flows can be built quickly and easily from scratch or pre-built templates. Power Automate integration with Power BI will allow exporting the dashboards or reports in various formats (PDF, PowerPoint, Excel) with ease. In the organization Power BI reports are shared by the Power BI service (Cloud environment) to various users in the organization and it is mandatory that everyone should hold the license of service to view the content published and shared with them. Using Power Automate the exported reports can be shared with both internal and external users on a set schedule time in a certain format. What is Power BI Power BI helps to create real-time high-level analytical dashboards when compared with excel in terms of easy data modeling, handling huge data sets, ETL, logical functions, and a wide range of visuals with better UI/UX. Power BI uses powerful compression algorithms to import and store the data, which permits you to analyze, and visualize large datasets that can’t be viewed in Microsoft Excel. Excel is not designed to work with big data and has a more adjusted amount of data. We don’t have to reduce or downsize the size of the dataset to perform the analysis, the entire detailed report and summarisation can exist in a single file. Integration with multiple data sources is one of the key features of Power BI. Data can be imported from multiple sources to power BI and all the ETL operations, data modeling can be performed in Power BI itself using Power Query. This will reduce the pain to create any kind of model in the native systems before the integration is made. What is Power Automate You might be wondering what is Power Automate and who can use it. Let me put it in simple terms with certain examples to make it better. Power Automate is an automation tool developed by Microsoft with the intention to allow citizen developers to access the capability of automation in day-to-day tasks. Whether you are an IT, Marketing, Finance, or HR professional, you will be able to use Power Automate. It Empowers everyone to build automated processes with flows in Power Automate. Use low-code, drag-and-drop tools and hundreds of pre-built connectors that automate repetitive, mundane tasks with ease. It boosts efficiency by recording and visualizing your end-to-end processes with a process advisor, providing guided recommendations for creating flows and deep insights that take the guesswork out of what to automate. Ex: With the help of Power Automate one can create a flow to send an alert email whenever a new row is created in a SharePoint list (a SharePoint list is connected to any ticketing tool and it creates a new row whenever a new ticket is raised). Save all your mail attachments into a drive-by using Power Automate and the list of capabilities are endless. Power Automate Connectors It has hundreds of pre-built connectors and it’s updated very frequently with more and more connectors. Features of Power Automate · No Code or low code automation tool · Save and secure Cloud-based tool · Pre-built connectors · Readily use Template flows · Peek Code feature · Dynamic content expression · RPA (UI Flows) · AI Builder Now it’s time to see some action points. Let’s hit the example to export the BI reports to various users through email How to Export Power BI Dashboards using Power Automate Step 1: Create your report on the Power BI desktop and import Power Automate visual onto the page Step 2: Click on the Power Automate visual ellipses to edit the visual Step 3: Click on New (left top corner) to create an instant cloud flow Step 4: Search for Power BI connector and then choose trigger as Power BI button clicked Step 5: Click on New Step and search for Power BI as a connector and Export to file for Power BI reports as an action Step 6: Fill in the details in the actions Workspace – where the report will be hosted in service Report – Report Name Export Format – PDF Step 7: Create a new step and search for Gmail or Outlook and select Send email as an action Fill TO Subject Body Click on Advanced options and fill the attachments using dynamic content Save the flow and Test it. Place the visual according to your choice and run the flow to trigger the action and send a mail to defined users. Licenses required This will work on Power BI PPU Conclusion We have demonstrated how to export and share Power BI reports with internal and external users (which does not require Active Directory accounts) using Power Automate inside Power BI using a button to trigger the flow, the same can be automated using Power Automate by scheduling the flow. By adding more steps you can create a better creative flow to meet your business needs as we discussed formerly in the article.

Aditya Kumar
August 10, 2022
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7 Simple Steps To Develop a BI Strategy

If you are an entrepreneur or someone who runs or administers a business, there are two things that you should keep in mind – systems and processes. One must test different strategies and solutions repeatedly and establish a sweet relationship with cold, hard numbers. This is where numbers tell data-driven stories, and business intelligence strategy comes into the picture. Business intelligence is the science of using numbers from varied resources to make critical business decisions. With a nicely chartered business intelligence strategy, one gets to sync these systems and processes with multiple goals. On the other hand, business intelligence consulting firms poke in the right direction, pointing to the right tools and training an organization needs to conduct as a part of the strategy. Additionally, one gets a business intelligence strategy that not only helps the key stakeholders think across the business components but also coordinates plans, objectives, personnel, and more to ensure that implementing the recently developed strategy is a success. 7 Simple Steps To Develop a BI Strategy But how does one develop a BI strategy all in-house or outsourced? Here are seven simple steps to develop a BI strategy: 1. Assemble a Leadership Team and Executive Sponsor To begin with, it is advisory to select individuals who understand the business and can also work in teams to pull levers when needed. This will have a company-wide impact, so choose your leadership and executive sponsor carefully. Eventually, some of the traits that play a major role in defining what sort of leader and team to choose from include: If you are looking at an organizational level of change, these are the characteristics to look out for. Next, it is time to build out a tech team. This team will work on the technology aspect of the BI team. To simplify it, the executive part of the business intelligence strategy team determines, “How will we infuse BI into our business, and how will BI affect it?”.” In contrast, the technical team will decide the specific technical requirements that get business intelligence up and running. 2. Establish KPIs with Key Stakeholders One of the biggest mistakes most companies make at this stage is not having a solid plan. Business intelligence consulting firms suggest you have the data to take your business to the next stage. This solid infrastructure captures all the necessary information at the right time. However, despite the theories, several companies struggle to deliver the expected results. At this point, the focus of the BI team should be to arm every employee with better information for improved productivity and for stakeholders to solve overarching business problems. Some of the key business problems that you need to ask about at this stage are: 3. Audit Current Data Infrastructure and Availability Now that you know the key parameters and factors determining your company’s growth, it is essential to have all the key stakeholders audit the current data infrastructure and derive meaningful inferences from the pile of data. At this stage, the discussions primarily revolve around your BI setup’s technical specifications and whether additional data needs to be captured in the process. Some of the critical questions one needs to ask in the following stage are as follows: 4. Choose The Right Set of Tools Once you have understood the ins and outs of your requirements, it is time to boil it down to real-life implementation. Following are the items to look out for while setting up your data infrastructure or interviewing a business intelligence consulting firm: Data Collection and Management The basic step to begin your data collection practices is to answer the following questions. These are: Storage and Capacity One must decide what kind of setup it needs when dealing with storage. Is it a cloud-based solution or data servers established on-premises? The security of these devices could not be ignored, and hence the technical team should be sound enough to carry out the task effectively. Data Visualization Tools and Dashboards Delivering insights through data visualization and visual analytics dashboards tools like Tableau or Microsoft Power BI is essential to the success of any BI strategy. However, one must consider the employees’ data literacy while crafting the visualizations. Do they need an extremely interactive tool or something that can be drilled down to explore the nitty-gritty of the problems, or is it a simpler dashboard with graphs? The choice is yours. Data Access and Governance When it comes to data access at various levels in the office, not everyone should know everything about the strategy. This is where data governance comes into the picture. Further, experts suggest measures against data theft (both internal and external); hence, priority should be given to security. Choosing the Right BI Consultant/Vendor Devising and implementing a BI strategy is a resource-intensive process; hence, outsourcing to a BI consultant or vendor sounds like a sound strategy. These individuals have years of experience with different vertical expertise in business intelligence consulting. Figure out the budget permissions and connect with a consultant or vendor per the requirements. 5. Executing BI Strategies Once you have crafted the strategy, it becomes crucial to point to the right timelines. When will all the components of the strategy be executed? Will the components be executed in one phase or all at once? And so on. This will add clarity to timelines and help you succeed in executing the strategy. Your strategy should delineate timelines and communication methods around the rollout of: And so on. 6. Training When implementing business intelligence problems, most employees (irrespective of level) fail to use such tools. Hence, it becomes critical for the entire company to organize training or boot camps or face a major haul. On the other hand, using BI solutions should not feel like a hassle; hence, with the training and ease, it should come naturally. 7. Launching Your Plan and Measuring Success Now that you have finally made it, all you need to do is now measure the success of the strategy

Yashica Chopra
July 11, 2022
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9 Advantages of Partnering with a Power BI Consultant

With organizations investing in business intelligence, there is an increase in demand of Power BI experts. Partnering with a consultant is a popular choice in the global market. We’ll discuss the advantages of hiring a Power BI implementation partner for a business. Data is a vital part of the current global industry. So much that 2.5 quintillion bytes are generated every day by internet users. A research study says that daily data generation will reach 165 zettabytes per year by 2025. Statista shows that the global big data market will reach $103 billion by 2027. Data delivers valuable insights and predictions to an organization to make decisions faster and better. The insights are derived through data analytics and business intelligence technologies. A majority of businesses around the world are adopting data analytics and advanced analytics to make the most of the available data. Facts and Factors has reported that the global predictive analytics market will reach $22.1 billion by 2026. On-premises, cloud and self-servicing analytical and business intelligence tools like Power BI have a crucial role in collecting, cleaning, processing, and analyzing data to deliver actionable insights. But how do organizations integrate and use BI tools? There are two ways to do so. One is to build an in-house team with data scientists and Power BI experts. Another method (the most preferred) is to hire offshore Power BI consultants to take care of the process. Various BI consulting companies offer services to help small, medium, and large enterprises adopt the data-driven model and make use of the insights derived by Power BI. Let’s read to find out how Power BI can help your business and why partnering with a consultant is a worthy choice. What are the Benefits of Microsoft Power BI? Power BI is a suite of business intelligence applications and services offered by Microsoft. It comes in various versions (desktop, web, & mobile) and can be used by any business organization. It is a data analytics and visualization/ reporting tool that shares micro and macro insights in real time. Power BI is an internationally famous BI tool for the range of features and services it offers. Here are some benefits of using Microsoft Power BI in your enterprise. Connect Data Sources Data is indeed found in abundance. But how do we collect this data from different sources? You can use Power BI to set up a data processing model where data from multiple sources is collected at a central location. This central database can be a data warehouse or data lake (on-premises or cloud). Power BI is connected to the central database, which has access to data from several sources. Data Integration Data integration is the next step after data collection. It’s where data from different sources is cleaned and transformed to provide a unified view. Power BI is known for its data integration abilities that allow a user to create a common data model after aggregating data from a range of sources. The sources can be online and offline. Power Bi’s ETL (Extract, Transform, & Load) tool is known as Power Query Editor. Turning Data to Insights The biggest advantage of Power BI is to turn raw data into actionable insights. The insights make it easy to understand the patterns, trends, etc., in large datasets. Power BI works with historical and real-time data to deliver insights for decision-making. Employees at different levels in the enterprise can use the insights to complete day-to-day work. Data Security Microsoft has built Power BI to ensure adequate data security and protection. Sensitivity labels, data compliance, defending cloud apps, Microsoft 365 data loss prevention, etc., are some examples of the data security methods adopted by Microsoft to keep your business data safe from unauthorized access and cyber-attacks. Data Visualization Power BI is also called a data visualization tool because of its ease to create reports and view them in real-time. Data visualization is a way of visualizing data insights in easy-to-understand formats. Line and bar graphs, pie charts, heat maps, tree maps, etc., are a few ways to represent data in graphical/ pictorial format. This allows users to understand patterns easily and quickly. User-Friendly Dashboard Power BI offers a customizable and interactive dashboard with a drag-and-drop feature. Users can add filters, KPIs, identifiers, etc., to the dashboard to analyze the same datasets based on various factors. The necessary information can be directly accessed from the dashboard with a couple of clicks. Since the Power BI dashboard is connected to the central system within the business, the data will be up to date at all times. Multi-Platform Usage Power BI comes in different versions. It can be used as a desktop app, web service from the cloud, and mobile app. It can be used as a free or paid service. Microsoft currently offers three versions of Power BI- Free, Pro, and Premium. The consultant will help you choose the right version for your organization based on the volume of business. You can upgrade or downgrade the plans as required. What Does a Power BI Consultant do? A Power BI consultant has an extensive role to play in an organization. The consultant has to provide end-to-end services: The consultant will be responsible for Power BI development, implementation, management, and maintenance in an enterprise. The expert can work with a business from any industry and with varied business requirements. The Power BI consultant will provide tailor-made solutions for each enterprise based on the niche, business volume, market conditions, and long-term goals. Advantages of Partnering with a Power BI Consultant Why do more than half the enterprises adopting the data-driven model hire offshore consultants? There are several advantages of partnering with a Power BI consultant than building an in-house team from scratch and having employees on the payroll. 1. Bridge Talent Gap You need employees with Power BI certification and expertise to build an in-house team. You either have to hire experts or train your existing employees. Recruitment and training are expensive and time-consuming for any business. An easier solution

Anshul Grover
June 22, 2022
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Getting Started with Dataflow in Power BI: Creating Your First Dataflow

Dataflow is a comprehensive way to deal with large datasets and reduce the load on data analytical tools/software like Power BI. We’ll discuss the need for dataflows, ways to create them, and the uses of dataflows for a business. Power BI is a popular data analytics and data visualization software developed by Microsoft. It is a collection of apps, software services, and connectors that collect, process, store, and analyze data to deliver reports in real-time. There is much more to Power BI than its definition. That’s because Power BI deals with the continuous inflow of data from multiple sources. The accuracy of the reports generated by the software depends on the quality of the input data. Cleaning, sorting, formatting, and streamlining data within the system is essential to get actionable insights. This gets harder when the business has to deal with large datasets. When you add large volumes of data to a system, you need to take extra care to maintain the overall quality. Setting up dataflow in Power BI is a smart solution to manage input data and ensure accurate reports. In this blog, we’ll read more about the problems caused by large datasets and how dataflow solves the problem. Issues with Large Datasets in Power BI Dirty data or unclean data is a real problem in today’s world. We have access to countless information sources. But how good is the data from each source? Errors, redundancy, unwanted details, etc., need to be identified and cleaned before the data is used for analytics. Big Data Data with greater velocity, variety, volume, etc., that cannot be processed by traditional systems is known as big data. Processing unclean big data requires a higher computing and statistical power that can increase the expenses for a business. Spellings and Missing Values Misspelled words or missing characters/ values can change the context of data and lead to the wrong analysis. Identifying these errors in large datasets is time-consuming and effort-intensive. Lexical Errors The difference in data structure between two or more data sources can create confusion when formatting the data into a single structure. Imagine what would happen if one field was attributed to another. Mismatches and Contradictions Data from two sources might contradict each other based on the parameters used. Common abbreviations have multiple meanings, and each source might refer to a different one. Money could be measured in different currencies. Changing the values and correcting them in a large dataset can be a never-ending task. What is Dataflow? Dataflow is a way to prevent issues with large datasets in Power BI. But what is dataflow? The term dataflow has quite a few meanings. Microsoft defines dataflow as a collection of tables that are created in the Power BI workspace. Any number of tables can be added to the dataflow. The existing ones can be edited to correct and update the information. According to another definition, dataflow is a process running in the cloud and not related to any particular Power BI report. The dataflow can be used for numerous reports simultaneously. That means five or ten employees can send a query to the same dataflow at the same time and get the information they require. Since dataflow runs on the cloud, any changes required will not have to be made to all the reports but only to the data in the dataflow. Another explanation of dataflow is comparing it to a typical river or a water body. Just like a river has different sources and stops but ends at a single destination, data in the system also comes from different sources but gets stored and used in the data warehouse/ data lake for analytics. By releasing data from silos and removing barriers, it will create a seamless data flow within the enterprise. When this data is used for querying in Power BI, it will provide better and more accurate insights. Why are Dataflows Important? We now know what dataflow is. But why is it so important for a business to create dataflow in Power BI? What changes does it bring to the business processes? Let’s take a look. Reusability The biggest advantage of creating dataflows is to reuse them multiple times. You don’t have to create a new dataflow for each report. You also don’t need to remove/ delete old dataflow and create a fresh one because of outdated information. One more advantage is that you don’t have to create new data connections each time (both on the cloud and on-premises). Seamless Integration Dataflows can be integrated with existing systems and tools in the business. Dataflows work seamlessly with Power BI as you only have to set up the connections and run queries. Cost-Effectiveness Your Power BI premium subscription is enough to create and access dataflows in data lakes. If you don’t use Microsoft Azure, there’s no need to start using it only for dataflows. There won’t be any additional expense to pay for licenses. Scheduling Data Updates Keeping data up to date is necessary to generate real-time reports. You can track the updates and changes made to dataflow and schedule the refreshing of the tables. Furthermore, you can build different processes to manage dataflows and save them in different places. Short-Term Data Storage A dataflow also serves as a temporary data storage center. Processing a large data file/ database doesn’t require extra time. The data can be stored in dataflow for the time being to speed up the analytics and deliver timely reports. How to Create Dataflow? Here’s how to create dataflow with new tables that are hosted on OneDrive Business: Results of Using Dataflow in Power BI Dataflow reduces the load on Power BI by taking over the transformation layer. Since the tables in dataflow can be edited and reused multiple times, dataflow can be used with many applications within the enterprise. The dataflows can be connected to other Microsoft Power Platform technologies Power Query, MS Dynamics 365, Power Automate, Power Apps, and so on. What are the Uses

Yashica Chopra
April 21, 2022
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Business Intelligence in Manufacturing: Transforming the Industry

Data-driven manufacturing is the need of the day. Digital transformation has entered the manufacturing industry and is changing the sector through data analytics. Business intelligence is the key to revamping manufacturing and improving quality, production, and returns. The manufacturing industry has been looking at business intelligence with renewed interest. Data is usually scattered in the factory and manually fed into the system; it’s also offline until it is entered into the database. Business intelligence provides a solution to bring the data together with minimum effort. It promises data collection, cleaning, and analytics to improve the manufacturing processes and increase returns. The manufacturing industry contributed 18% of the GDP in the Middle East in 2018. The countries have marked manufacturing as an integral part of their economic strategies to achieve their 2030 visions. The ME region has the necessary infrastructure and connectivity to boost the manufacturing industry. Oxford Economics said that UAE’s industrial sector grew more than a third during the 2007-17 decade. Innovations and technological adaptations have been game-changers. Artificial intelligence, business intelligence, data analytics, etc., are said to take the manufacturing industry in the Middle East to newer heights. The Gulf countries are using business intelligence services offered by offshore companies to revamp their existing systems and make the necessary changes to stay active in the competitive market. Let’s read in detail about the role of business intelligence in manufacturing and how data analytics can help manufacturing industries fulfill their role in contributing to the 2030 economic vision of the Middle East. Types of Manufacturing Processes In simple terms, manufacturing is the process of producing products/goods using raw materials and tools. Biological or chemical processing may also be used to obtain the final product. Be it the production of a tiny toy, household appliances, or an automobile, converting raw materials into finished goods by following a systematic and pre-defined procedure is known as manufacturing. However, the reality is much more complicated and involves a range of factors such as quality, cost, production cycle, duration, supply chain, and more. The path from acquiring raw materials to supplying finished goods to the market is filled with various elements that are not always under our control. Furthermore, the manufacturing processes are classified into three types: Make to Stock MTS is where the finished goods are made in large numbers and held as stock in stores. These are widely used and always in demand. That said, manufacturing too much in surplus can lead to blocked capital and losses. Make to Order MTO is where the manufacturer waits for an order to start the production process. The clients/ customers have to wait until the production cycle is complete and the end product is handed over to them. Make to Assemble MTA is a combination of MTS and MTO. The manufacturer has a stock of the parts required to assemble the final product. The assembling will be done only when an order is placed. This not only reduces the time to deliver the product to the customers but can leave the manufacturer with excess parts if there are no orders. How a manufacturer manages the processes and stock determines the success of the business. Business intelligence helps manufacturers use historical and real-time data to correctly anticipate the market demands and adjust production accordingly. What is Business Intelligence? Business intelligence is a set of procedures, techniques, and software used to convert raw data into meaningful insights. BI allows manufacturers and enterprises to increase their business efficiency by making required changes to their systems and processes. Every industry requires business intelligence to analyze data and derive actionable insights. These insights help businesses to make better decisions in a quick time and stay relevant in the competitive markets. Business intelligence is the use of data and data analytics to gather valuable information. BI for the manufacturing industry is also called manufacturing intelligence or manufacturing analytics. Business Intelligence in Manufacturing Industry The manufacturing industry needs to streamline and balance machine operations, supply chain, and logistics to get the desired results. The main aim of the manufacturing industry will be to reduce production costs without compromising the quality standards or delaying the production cycle. To achieve the goal of reducing costs and increasing production, the manufacturer needs to rely on the data-driven model to make decisions. This is possible when the data flow is aligned within the manufacturing unit and bridges the gap between data, systems, and employees. BI and data analytics give manufacturers the necessary tools and insights to use data effectively and make the right decisions for the business. How is Business Intelligence Used in Manufacturing? The use of business intelligence in manufacturing can be seen at every stage, from sourcing raw materials to supplying the final goods to end-users. Since most manufacturers already have the ERP system in place, adopting a BI and data-driven model is not too complicated. Hiring the services of a business intelligence developer will help manufacturers understand the ways to implement BI and data analytics to derive accurate insights. Improve Operational Efficiency Operational efficiency is a must for a manufacturer to survive the competition in the markets. However, it is possible only when a business knows what changes to make and which processes to continue. While data is available in abundance, using the data efficiently to gain in-depth insights into the existing operations of the manufacturer can be achieved through business intelligence. BI reduces the time taken to analyze data and derive reports, thus providing the management with the necessary information to make changes on time. Manage and Streamline Supply Chain A manufacturer works with various third-party vendors, suppliers, carriers, distributors, etc. A delay at any point in the supply chain will lead to disruptions, postponements, and losses throughout the production cycle. It could lead to product failure or put the manufacturer at a disadvantage. Business intelligence gives insights into suppliers, transporters, deliveries, expenses incurred during distribution, and so on. The reports can be used to choose reliable suppliers and freight partners and plan the production

Yashica Chopra
March 31, 2022
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Management Information System Vs. Business Intelligence: How is BI Better Than Traditional MIS

MIS is a traditional information system used to collect and process data. BI is an umbrella term covering various processes and technologies that empower an enterprise to use data effectively and make the right decisions. Before business intelligence took over, many enterprises had another information system called the MIS. Management Information Systems were the heart of every business and played a vital role in data collecting, storage, processing, and reporting. However, MIS had its disadvantages and became a burden for many businesses. With business intelligence entering the market, enterprises adopted BI, not to replace MIS but to revamp their entire internal system. MIS is a small part of the business intelligence framework and is no longer enough in the competitive world to help establishments make the right decisions. Let’s read more about MIS and BI in detail and understand how BI is a better and more comprehensive alternative to traditional MIS. What is Management Information System or MIS? MIS or Management Information System is based on an old concept where data is collected from various sources, compiled, and presented in a readable format. It is used by mid-level and top-level managers to make the necessary business decisions. MIS is a collection of systems and processes that facilitate data collection, compilation, and reporting within the enterprise. The definition sounds similar to what a BI tool does. However, the difference lies in the technology used, the approaches to data collection, storage methods, and reporting formats. Before we read more about the differences, let’s take a brief look at the different functions of MIS. Data Collection: Different types of data can be collected by MIS. Financial information, employee details, sales figures, etc., can be sent to MIS, which is integrated with other software used by employees. Decision Making: MIS is used to help with decision-making. It presents aggregate data reports that help the top management make day-to-day decisions. Collaboration: Employees can be provided access to edit and share the data stored in MIS. The MIS department handles the everyday issues related to the system. Business Reporting: Managers make decisions based on the business reports generated by MIS. Even non-managers can get reports to compare data or compile a data file. What is Business Intelligence or BI? Business intelligence or BI is a wider concept that combines MIS, business analytics, data mining, data visualization, and much more. It is a modern framework that helps enterprises adopt the data-driven model to make better decisions based on historical and real-time data. BI gives businesses a comprehensive view of the enterprise data and makes use of this information to understand market trends, improve customer experience, evaluate existing policies, and make changes to build a better enterprise. Today’s BI tools and solutions offer self-service analysis to employees from different levels in the organization. Business intelligence tools are flexible, scalable, and user-friendly. Here’s what the BI framework handles in an enterprise: Data Mining: It is the process of analyzing large volumes of data to gather more information. Datasets, statistics, and machine learning are used for data mining. Data Preparation: Data from internal and external sources is collected, cleaned, and formatted to keep it ready for data analytics. Types of Analytics: Business intelligence is capable of providing different types of analytics based on the organization’s requirements. For example, preliminary data is used for descriptive analytics; descriptive analytics data is used for statistical analytics; predictive analytics is a combination of statistical analytics, data mining, and machine learning. Querying: An employee asking the BI tool for specification information is called querying. The tool uses computing power to collect data from datasets and processes it to provide an answer to the query. Data Visualization: Visualization is the technique of presenting data in a graphic form in real-time. The reports generated by the BI tool are presented in charts, graphs, holograms, heat maps, etc., for easy understanding. What is the Difference Between Management Information System and Business Intelligence? MIS and BI are interrelated. They have common elements, though BI is an umbrella term that encompasses a range of processes and tools used to implement the data-driven model in an enterprise. Scope and Focus Management Information System or MIS is a part of the business intelligence framework. Traditionally, enterprises used MIS mainly for revenue and expense reporting. However, they had to face several issues with inaccuracies, inconsistent data, and other system complications. While business intelligence deals with the analysis of products and customers, MIS is used to analyze the business in terms of finances. Difference in Reporting MIS delivers aggregate data reports which are not enough to get a complete picture of the business situation. It doesn’t offer in-depth insights that help the managers identify the problem. For example, the MIS report gives aggregate data about income and expenses. This doesn’t include transactional data that are key to identifying the root cause of the issue. The managers have to run multiple queries to gather the relevant information. Business intelligence tools provide in-depth analytics for the given data. Moreover, the reports are generated in real-time. The dashboard of a BI tool allows employees to get a macro and micro view of the same report just with a few clicks. Business intelligence not only works faster but also requires lesser computing power as it has a higher processing capacity. Self-Servicing Business intelligence tools allow self-servicing within organizations by empowering employees to access data and run analytics as and when necessary. The dashboards can be accessed from different platforms such as web browsers and mobile apps. While MIS is complicated and confusing, BI is elaborate yet efficient and user-friendly. Automation is possible with business intelligence. MIS and Business Intelligence: What’s the Connection? Management Information System has a narrow range of services, and business intelligence deals with a wider and broader scope where different aspects of the business are taken into consideration. Furthermore, BI is an advanced and modern framework that uses the latest technology to deliver accurate insights and reports. The disadvantages of MIS are solved using the BI tools. Accurate Insights: Unlike MIS, the reports generated

Yashica Chopra
March 24, 2022
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Power BI Supply Chain Dashboard: What Can It Do for Your Business?

Supply chain analytics helps businesses understand their datasets to make informed decisions about their logistics and transportation processes. Power BI is an incredibly useful business intelligence tool to create supply chain dashboards and use the insights in real-time. Let’s discuss the role of supply chain analytics and Power BI in various industries. The supply chain is a network of people, businesses, and processes that ensure that a company continues to produce and sell products/ services in the market. From sourcing raw materials to moving finished goods to the warehouse and delivering them to the end customers, the supply chain network is intricate, complex, and systematic. The implementation of the supply chain strategy has an impact on the success of a business. After all, how can a company deliver the products/services to the end-users if it cannot source the materials or transport the finished goods as per the schedule? Covid-19 has disrupted the global supply chain, and the Middle Eastern markets, too, faced the same trouble. Challenges such as shortage of labor due to lockdowns, increase in demand, and reduction in supply and adhering to the safety protocol makes it difficult for businesses to manage their supply chain. However, the companies also know a solution to the problem. Many Middle Eastern businesses are heavily investing in technology, especially artificial intelligence, to make their supply chains more resilient even in adverse conditions. For example, Hypermotion Dubai is an ME edition of the German-initiated convex that gives the transportation and logistics industries a fresh start. The aim is to be sure that the emirate continues to lead in supply chain management and speed up development. The Dubai-based global logistics company, Aramex, has built a data lake and streamlined its supply chain process by relying on machine learning. This led to a whopping 74% increase in shipping accuracy. It also resulted in a 40% reduction of calls to customer support. Middle Eastern companies know that digitalization is the way to the future. Business intelligence for the supply chain is becoming an integral part of various companies. But what is supply chain business intelligence? How does it help the companies, and which BI tools can be used to build a supply chain dashboard? What is Supply Chain Analytics? Supply chain analytics is the analysis of the individual elements of the supply chain that work together to help the business achieve its goals. Procurement, inventory, warehouse, order management, shipping, and deliveries are the elements of the supply chain. Understanding how every element contributes to keeping the supply chain running will help businesses overcome roadblocks and prevent delays. While there are various software applications to manage individual elements, companies need to bring it all together on a single platform/dashboard. This makes it easier to identify the correlations and come up with the necessary solutions. Types of Supply Chain Analytics The following are the four major types of supply chain analytics that help enterprises improve the efficiency of their business operations, streamline logistics, and save time and money without compromising quality. Key challenges that Supply chain analytics solution solves: Actionable Advice for Data-Driven Leaders Struggling to reap the right kind of insights from your business data? Get expert tips, latest trends, insights, case studies, recommendations and more in your inbox. How Do Companies Use Supply Chain Analytics? Companies use analytics to process and analyze the data generated at different points in the supply chain. The logistics dashboard empowers companies to stay up to date and get real-time information about their supply chain processes. It gives them the information to make last-minute changes and make decisions based on historical and real-time information. Managing local, national, and global supply chains is simpler when using supply chain analytics. How Can Supply Chain Analytics Transform a Business? Businesses need to invest in building supply chain dashboards to make the most of data analytics. Since companies don’t often have in-house teams to manage business intelligence, they hire offshore solution providers to create the BI dashboards. Many AI service providers recommend Power BI for supply chain analytics. Power BI is a Microsoft product that helps build business intelligence dashboards for various business requirements. Power BI experts help business enterprises use supply chain analytics to transform their business in the following ways: Streamline Inventory and Warehouse Management Accurate forecasting can reduce the uncertainties in inventory and warehouse management. Analyzing customer preferences, purchase history, market trends, and the inventory at different distribution centers will help businesses plan the stock in their inventory to keep up with the customers’ requirements. It is one of the most vital supply chain management techniques. Increase Sales Knowing which products have a higher demand and anticipating the changes in the market conditions will increase sales for the business. Supply chain analytics gives the management the necessary insights about the demand and supply ratio for their products. Releasing products into the market at the right time will give the business a better chance to capture the customer base. Improve Quality Standards The quality standards here pertain to the logistics and supply chain processes. For example, the Power BI logistics dashboard will make it easy to identify the gaps in the supply chain that are causing disruptions in procurement or deliveries. By rectifying the gaps, the business increases the quality standards of the process and gets higher returns. Data Utilization How a business uses the supply chain dataset determines whether it can achieve its goals or not. Big data solutions facilitate businesses to better understand the changing demands in the market. Not only does supply chain analytics use historical data, but it also processes real-time information from multiple sources to increase the accuracy of the forecasts/predictive insights. Supply chain analytics makes businesses proactive instead of reactive. How is Power BI used in Supply Chain Management? Power BI is a popular business intelligence tool used by enterprises of all sizes and volumes. Multiple dashboards can be created for each department to provide employees access to the centralized data sets and the derived insights. Supply chain analytics using Power BI improves functional efficiency and aligns the processes

Arya Bharti
March 10, 2022
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Leveraging Business Intelligence in Retail Industry: Benefits and Getting Started

The business intelligence market is expected to grow with a CAGR of 8.7% and hit the 43.03 bn USD mark by 2028. Further, a recent survey suggests that 58% of companies consider business intelligence crucial for retail and wholesale sectors. Technological innovation is happening faster than ever and digital transformation is sending ripples across all the industries. As data analytics and business intelligence overtake the hunches and guesswork, the disparate and fragmented industries, such as retail, are looking at a major makeover. A recent feature in Forbes talks about customers becoming increasingly conscious in terms of making purchases and how important it has become to deliver exceptional services alongside great products. This has led to the widespread adoption of smart analytics platforms that offer business value across the most crucial 4 verticals, as shown below: The smart analytics tools allow retail business owners to dig deep into their customer data and uncover hidden insights about service, support, customer journeys, and brand expectations. The software solutions allow them to streamline their business offerings in a customer-centric manner and monitor the results of all such efforts. We discuss how business intelligence, such as interactive data visualization software, can offer retailing insights to steer your business towards growth. How would the retail industry use business intelligence and what is the best way to leverage it for boosting your business? Below, we explore these problem statements at length. Why Business Intelligence for Retail and eCommerce? Business intelligence allows you to make the most critical business decisions in a data-driven manner. You can dig deep into the customer data and find out what issues or concerns they have regarding your products. This way, you can improve your products and services to deliver delightful customer experiences. The best way to leverage business intelligence in retail is via software tools. Power BI is an excellent data visualization software that can dig deep into the customer, market, organizational, and business data to discover the most compelling retail visuals. The data generated from them are interactive in nature and highly secure, so you don’t have to worry about the safety and security of your data resources. You can connect these software tools to multiple data sources and tap into all your customer segments with its interactive and intuitive retail dashboards. What makes the entire endeavor so amazing is the fact that you can generate data-intensive reports from a combination of dashboards with different kinds of visualizations that are relevant to particular business areas. So, business intelligence has all the arms in its arsenal to drive a critical transformation in a retail business scenario via data visualization and business intelligence. Shown below, is how the entire process comes out to be: While the infographic is highly engaging and granular, it can be a bit overwhelming, especially for beginners who are just taking the first steps towards digital transformation and business intelligence. Hence, we explore the various benefits of using business intelligence for retail in the next section. Business Intelligence in Retail Industry: Exploring Benefits and Functionalities Business intelligence finds many applications in retail, ranging from learning about your customers to employees. Using BI tools, you can identify the major issues that are ailing your supply chain efficiency and resolve them. Further, BI tools offer smart data visualization to help you make the most of your organizational data. 1. Knowing Your Customers: Inside Out Digital shoppers are smart, more perceptive, and look beyond the reward points and discounts when it comes to customer service and experiences. Retail analytics dashboards help you gain visibility into customer insights and purchase patterns. You can leverage the predictive analytics and identify their shopping predictions to scale effectively alongside your customer demands. You can identify, adapt, and deliver across the ever-evolving needs of your customers, and that too across all channels. As you have a 360-degree view of your customers’ expectations and requirements, you can deliver across all of them, thereby ensuring that you streamline the entire customer journey instead of standalone touchpoints. You can personalize your customer interactions on every channel and deliver proactive customer service and support in an omnichannel manner. Business intelligence tools allow you to use hundreds of data connectors for combining Petabytes of data from external and internal data sources. Hence, you can have data-rich and cohesive customer insights that are reliable as well as intuitive. 2. Empowering Your Employees: The Right Mix of Human and Automation Your employees are your core strength no matter what level of automation you have in your organization, or what size your retail setup is. Hence, it is important to empower your employees with the right tools for collaboration, data analytics, customer intelligence, and business operations. All these retail insights are data-rich and actionable. So, your management or analysts don’t have to spend hours making sense of the huge blocks of data they have. They can easily figure out the next course of action with highly intuitive retail KPIs dashboards. They can easily export and share this data in various formats for real-time collaboration and presentation to take business decisions in an agile manner. What makes the entire process so awesome is the fact that the insights can be implemented without any doubt, as they are stemming from exhaustive data processing and not from any third-party market research data. Further, your employees have 360-degree customer profiles that have all the contextual, behavioral, and interaction information they might need to form a wholesome opinion about a new strategy or marketing decision. 3. Smart Supply Chains: Resilient and Efficient The retail industry is inseparable from supply chains that are inherently inefficient with data silos and fragmented components. Using business intelligence in retail, you can also steer your supply chains towards transformation. You can get the right product at the right price and deliver the same to the right customer at the right time without succumbing to the inefficiencies of the supply chains. Data analytics empowers the supply chains by incorporating different elements, such as IoT, automation,

Yashica Chopra
February 22, 2022
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Power BI HR Analytics Dashboard: Simplify HR Processes

Data analytics for HR helps streamline the human resource processes within the organization. The Power BI dashboard is commonly used to derive actionable insights to improve employee performance and retention rates. Let’s read more about the importance of HR analytics in an enterprise. The HR (Human Resource) department is the heart of every organization. From recruitment to compensation to performance appraisal and employee wellbeing, the HR department plays several roles in the enterprise. The HR acts as a mediator or a bridge between the employees and the management or enterprise. It’s no surprise that the HR department is already burdened with work. Providing them access to the latest technology and means to derive insights in real-time will help reduce the workload and create a healthy environment throughout the organization. HR analytics or people analytics is the key to helping the HR department provide a better working experience for the employees. Unlike other analytics, HR analytics doesn’t collect data about employee performance. It gathers data about the HR processes and the work environment so that the processes can be made more efficient to keep employees happy and productive. Issues such as high employee turnover rate, decreased productivity, employee grievances, etc., are the focus of HR analytics. What is HR Analytics? Human Resource or HR analytics is where analytical processes are applied to human capital in the business to improve outcomes and enhance critical talent. The analytics aims to provide in-depth insights into the HR processes to increase employee retention, performance, and productivity. The Covid-19 pandemic has affected the Middle East market along with the rest of the world. A report published in Jan 2021 showed that around half of the employees wanted to change jobs. While some responders said that flexible working and job security were their primary factors, 45% admitted that a higher salary was their aim. The employees in Gulf and UAE regions saw an increase and decrease in salary. While the increase was to retain top-level professional employees, the pay cuts were due to the pandemic and resorted after the market conditions improved. Around 64% of the employers in the Gulf said they would be hiring additional staff in 2021 and 2022. So how does the HR department make these decisions in volatile market conditions? They rely on HR analytics to understand the existing situation and come up with a new one. A survey report by CIPD showed that 82% of the respondents were already using HR analytics in the Middle East. Almost 72% of them responded that they will continue to invest the same amount or increase the investment in HR analytics. Middle Eastern organizations are actively upgrading the legacy systems and adopting the latest technology to provide employees with more growth opportunities. HR analytics will continue to play a vital role in helping organizations design robust and agile end-to-end HR processes. How to Get Started with HR Analytics? Data analytics in HR helps build the data-driven model to make decisions based on actionable insights in real-time. Implementing HR analytics requires proper planning and continuous monitoring to ensure that the analysis reports are accurate. Have a Data Management Plan How do you plan to manage the data within the organization? Start by creating a data governance program and define policies to collect, clean, process, and store data. Then you need to align the data definitions with analytical processes and focus on the four main key areas of human resources- recruitment, absenteeism, turnover, and retention. Choose the Reporting Software Which reporting and visualization software do you want to use to derive analytics? For example, Power BI is popular software for HR analytics and is used by many businesses from around the world. Build the Dashboard You also need to determine whether you have the necessary talent to run analytics or if you need the assistance of a Power BI consulting company. Many organizations in the UAE hire offshore solution providers to set up the HR analytical dashboard. The metrics you choose for the dashboard should align with the KPIs of your business and achieve short-term, midterm, and long-term goals. Run a Pilot Test You don’t need to invest heavily in HR analysis from the very first day. Start small by focusing on minimum metrics and run a pilot test to see how the insights are helping in making faster and better decisions. Gradually, you can expand the dashboard and hire HR analysts to manage the processes. Actionable Advice for Data-Driven Leaders Struggling to reap the right kind of insights from your business data? Get expert tips, latest trends, insights, case studies, recommendations and more in your inbox. Work on Capacity Building HR analysis reports are used to improve the processes and capacity of your business. Focus on one target group first before implementing the changes throughout the enterprise. Starting with the capacity building of HR Business Partners is recommended as they are the ones who are in constant contact with your customers. Consider Data Privacy and Security Dealing with employee data means you have to be extra careful about data privacy. Your employees need to know that their data privacy rights won’t be compromised to run HR analytics. Set up policies to find a balance between both. What are the Benefits of HR Analytics? The HR analytics dashboards help the business adopt a strategic approach to growth and development. How Power BI Consultants Can Help You Overcome the Biggest HR Analytics Challenges? Though the HR analytics dashboard offers numerous benefits to the organization, the process is not without challenges and complications. How you overcome the roadblocks determines the success of your enterprise. Power BI consultants can help the HR team find a comprehensive solution for the challenges and create HR analysis dashboards to derive real-time insights. A Gap in Talent Pool As we previously discussed, the lack of data analysts within the enterprise can make it hard to use technology and derive insights for the HR team. This problem can be solved by hiring offshore consultants. Bad Data The accuracy of the reports depends

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