What is Power BI?
Microsoft Power BI is a reporting and business-intelligence tool. Taking your Sage data along with other data sources it turns this into an interactive dashboard. Dashboards show KPIs & visuals and are typically customised to suit business needs. The dashboard is available via a web browser or mobile app with the option of a daily email snapshot.
Getting Started
1. Gather requirements, priorities, key users and how output will be measured.
Usually, we use an existing sage report as a baseline to ensure data is correct. We then implement custom measures and KPIs. This approach ensures all data-queries can be pointed back towards a sage report. This simplifies support strategies and ensures confidence in the output.
2. Conduct a proof of concept to validate the approach and ensure alignment with the project's objectives.
3. Progress through the steps of creating the solution, validating its effectiveness, and deploying it into the operational environment.
4. Provide ongoing support and monitoring to ensure the solution continues to meet the organization's needs.
How is Power BI used?
Power BI doesn’t replace existing reports, instead, it offers additional insight which existing reports can’t easily provide. We also rely on existing reports to validate, sense-check that Power BI is giving an accurate picture.
For example, many of us have used Excel to get a total per month/year to compare with a previous month/year. This approach is sound for the short term but is manual, can require an Excel wizard, and on occasion, an incorrect input gives incorrect results. Utilizing Power BI, we achieve the same result (albeit outside Excel) but without the risk associated with manual input.
Why choose Power BI?
In 2024, Gartner ranked Microsoft Power BI as an industry leader (source). Our reasons for choosing to work with Power BI:
• Market adoption:
o Widely used across many industries.
o Training resources are plentiful, paid tuition & self-training.
o Actively developed by Microsoft since 2011 (2016 for Azure embedded).
• Optimum total cost of ownership:
o Pricing “per user” minimizes recurring cost.
o Hosted by Microsoft – no additional server needed.
o On-going maintenance costs are low.
• Simple to implement for Sage 200:
o Microsoft SQL Server which houses Sage 200 is fully supported by Power BI.
o Most users already use Office 365, which Power BI uses for authentication.
• Reliability & Support
o Once configured, support queries are rare.
o Moving data to a new server is straight forward.
• Security:
o Authentication is secured via Office 365 (Microsoft Entra ID).
o Data is secured within your Office 365 ecosystem (Azure services).
• Extensibility
o Data can be retrieved from most data sources.
o Dashboards are amendable by end users with training.
o Data models (tables/calculations) can be amended with adv. training. This allows access to bespoke tables.
If you are undecided which solution fits your business, within the Sage 200 ecosystem, there are a number of products available. To name a few: Sage 200 Business Intelligence, Pan Intelligence, Phocas, Qlik. Sage also have a Power BI offering however, this works differently to our offering and is not extensible.
Why choose BizSysCon for Power BI?
• Implementation:
o We are independent certified Sage 200 consultants & developers with experience across Sage 200’s ecosystem of add-ons and integrations.
o We do the initial deployment. Alternatively, we can guide your system administrator through the process.
o We review existing reports to eliminate manual reporting/data manipulation.
o In some scenarios, we may suggest tackling an issue with means other than Power BI so it’s important to talk about requirements early on.
• Pre-configured dashboards:
o We deploy our default dashboards which have been written over the course of several years.
• Optimum total cost of ownership:
o No large front cost – Microsoft charge per user; we charge for our time.
• Reliability & Support:
o We train an admin user on managing access so that you can manage Power BI independently.
o We offer ongoing support. Once configured, support queries are rare.
• Security:
o We offer a non-disclosure agreement. If you have additional security requirements please speak with us.
• Extensible:
o Source code is available and can be amended.
o Dashboards can be amended *.
o Data models (tables/calculations) can be amended*1.
* Typically users amend dashboards whilst Bizsyscon will amend data models. Users can amend data models, but these amendments are needed less often and require familiarity with SQL, PowerBIDesktop and DAX.
Explore Power BI in Action:
Want to see Power BI in action? Check out our demo page to explore how the tool works and get a feel for its features. See how easy it is to visualize and analyze data.