What Is Power BI? What It Is, How It’s Used, and More

Microsoft Power BI is a data visualization and reporting platform that is used by businesses professionals every day. While the platform is commonly used by business analysts, it is also specifically designed to be easily accessible for those without any specialized data knowledge. 

In this article, you’ll learn more about Power BI, what it’s used for, and the professionals who typically work with it. Toward the end, you’ll also explore some alternatives and explore online specializations and guided projects that can help you get started with this important business intelligence tool. 

Power BI explained 

Microsoft Power BI is a data visualization platform used primarily for business intelligence purposes. Designed to be used by business professionals with varying levels of data knowledge, Power BI’s dashboard is capable of reporting and visualizing data in a wide range of different styles, including graphs, maps, charts, scatter plots, and more. 

Power BI itself is composed of several interrelated applications: Power BI Desktop, Pro, Premium, Mobile, Embedded, and Report Server. While some of these applications are free-to-use, paid subscriptions to the pro and premium versions provide greater analytics capabilities. 

Power BI is also a part of Microsoft’s Power Platform, which includes Power Apps, Power Pages, Power Automate, and Power Virtual Agents. Created as “low-code tools,” these applications help businesses analyze and visualize data, design business solutions, automate processes, and create no-code chatbots. 

Read more: 5 Business Intelligence Tools You Need to Know

Power BI uses

Whether you’re a bona fide data pro or are just entering the business world,  Power BI is designed to empower you with data-driven insights. Some of the most common uses for the platform include: 

• Creating reports and dashboards that present data sets in multiple ways using visuals 

• Connecting various data sources, such as Excel sheets, onsite data warehouses, and cloud-based data storage, and then transforming them into business insights  

• Turning data into a wide range of different visuals, including pie charts, decomposition trees, gauge charts, KPIs, combo charts, bar and column charts, and ribbon charts – among many other options 

• Providing company-wide access to data, data visualization tools, and insights in order to create a data-driven work culture

Who uses power BI? 

Power BI users aren’t limited to data professionals, such as data scientists or data engineers, and can include a wide range of different business workers. In fact, the platform is intentionally designed so non-technical users can easily create reports, manipulate data, and perform in-depth data analysis operations.

Nonetheless, some of the most common analyst positions that use the platform on a daily basis include the following: 

• Business analysts

• Business intelligence analysts

• Supply chain analysts

• Data analyst

Power BI in the real world 

As data becomes more and more important to the daily functioning of the goods and services that businesses provide, so too do business intelligence platforms capable of turning that data into insights, reports, and interactive visualizations. 

For example, a university attempting to optimize the efficiency of their buildings might set up a system (like a digital twin) to collect real-time data on critical building systems. Afterward, they might connect these data sources to Power Bi and identify areas for improvement. 

An advertising company, meanwhile, running a digital marketing campaign might monitor its effectiveness by connecting various data sources to Power Bi and generating a dashboard that highlights key figures. Here, marketers would be able to better understand what marketing channels are best for reaching their target market. 

Practice Power BI online today

Want to learn more about Power BI but aren’t sure where to start?

Get step-by-step instructions on how to use the platform through Coursera Guided Projects. In the project-based, interactive course  Getting Started with Power BI Desktop, you’ll learn the basics of the platform in just two hours. In the free Guided Project, Prepare, Clean, Transform, and Load Data using Power BI, you’ll learn practical ways for data cleaning and transformation on the platform.

Power BI alternatives 

While Microsoft’s Power BI is one of the most popular business intelligence platforms, it’s not the only one out there. As you’re exploring BI solutions for your workplace or future career, then, you might also consider exploring some common alternatives to Power BI, such as: 

• Tableau 

• Domo

• Yellowfin

• Qlink Sense

• SAP Business Intelligence

Get started with Coursera 

Data empowers modern businesses, equipping them with actionable insights that facilitate strategic decision making. Prepare for a career in business analytics by taking a cost-effective, online specialization on Coursera. 

In Wharton’s Business Analytics Specialization, you’ll learn how data analysts describe, predict, and inform business decisions in the specific areas of marketing, human resources, finance, and operations, while also developing basic data literacy and an analytic mindset that will help you make strategic decisions based on data. Best of all, the specialization is designed for all business professionals, including those without any prior analytics experience. 

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