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 and professionals every day. While the platform is commonly used by business analysts, it is also designed to be easily accessible for those without any specialized data knowledge. 

In this article, you’ll learn more about Power BI, what modern businesses use it for, and the professionals who typically work with it. Toward the end, you’ll also explore some alternatives and learn about resources on Coursera that can help you get started with this important business intelligence tool. 

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What is Microsoft Power BI?

Microsoft Power BI is a data visualization platform used primarily for business intelligence purposes. Power BI stands for Power Business Intelligence and refers to a collection of software services, tools, and connectors that help you transform data from multiple sources into actionable insights.

Designed for business professionals with varying levels of data knowledge, Power BI’s dashboard can report and visualize data in a wide range of styles, including graphs, maps, charts, scatter plots, and more. Power BI's "AI Insights" functionality, meanwhile, uses artificial intelligence to find insights within data sets for users.

Power BI itself is composed of several interrelated applications:

• Power BI Desktop: A desktop application used to create interactive reports with visual analytics.

• Power BI Pro: Collaborate on interactive reports throughout your organization.

• Power BI Premium: Unify self-service and enterprise BI.

• Power BI Mobile: Access business intelligence data from any device.

• Power BI Embedded: White-label Power BI to provide customer-facing dashboards and analytics in your own apps.

• Power BI Report Server: On-premises solution included in Premium; can be moved to the cloud.

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

What is Power BI used for?

Whether you’re a data pro or are just entering the business world, Power BI is designed to empower you with data-driven insights. You can use Power BI in a variety of ways, across industries and teams and functions within an organization. Let's explore some common uses for the platform, including: 

1. Data visualization and reporting

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

• Turn 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.

2. Data integration

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

• Integrate Power BI with a website.

3. Business intelligence

• Track key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics in real time.

• Use built-in AI and machine learning to make business predictions based on historical data.

4. Collaboration and sharing

• Provide company-wide access to data, data visualization tools, and insights to create a data-driven work culture.

• Collaborate on workspaces and shared datasets.

5. Financial analysis

• Create financial statements and balance sheets.

• Analyze sales performance and profit.

6. Marketing and sales

• Integrate Power BI with a CRM system to analyze customer data and use insights to improve customer experience.

• Analyze market trends and consumer behavior to discover opportunities.

Learn more about how Power BI is used in this lecture from Microsoft's Unlock the Power of Data with PowerBI course:

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 users. In fact, the platform is intentionally designed so that 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 its 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 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

Want to learn more about Power BI but unsure where to start? Coursera's Guided Projects offer step-by-step instructions on how to use the platform.

Learn the basics of Power BI with the interactive course Getting Started with Power BI Desktop.

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. That way, you can make an empowered decision about which business intelligence tool is right for you or your organization.

Here are some alternatives to investigate: 

• Tableau is a user-friendly and flexible platform for data visualization. Some of the key features include drag-and-drop data exploration and single-sign-on integration.

• Domo offers data integration, business intelligence and analytics, embedded analytics, app creation, and security and governance.

• Yellowfin is an enterprise and embedded analytics platform. Key features include action-based dashboards, automated analysis, and data storytelling.

• Qlik Sense offers data integration, embedded and augmented analytics, and AI and ML capabilities.

• SAP Business Intelligence makes it possible to get contextualized business insights, run data-driven simulations and forecasts, automate workflows, make decisions with AI, and more.

Build your Power BI skills on Coursera

Power BI is a powerful business analytics and visualization tool. Start building or advancing your skills with Power BI through one of these specializations or Professional Certificates on Coursera:

To build comprehensive Power BI and Power Platform skills, explore the Microsoft Power BI and Power Platform for Productivity Specialization.

To launch your career as a Power BI data analyst, enroll in the Microsoft Power BI Data Analyst Professional Certificate.

For a deeper understanding of data visualization and Power BI, consider the Microsoft Data Visualization Professional Certificate.