The BI in Power BI stands for business intelligence. Business intelligence is a field of technology that concerns itself with everything from reporting to using math to predict the future. You may have heard it referred to by some other names, such as data mining or analytics.

Whatever name it is called in your organization, the goal of business intelligence is to distill the massive volume of data gathered and generated by modern businesses into actionable intelligence.

Basing your plans on data-driven decision making will allow you a deeper understanding of not only what you are doing but why. Data-guessing decision making or, worse, we've always done it this way decision making will become anathema to your data culture.

The reason for this is that your competitors will start driving their business decisions based on data analytics. Their businesses will become more intelligent, see market opportunities and trends before you do, and respond to customer needs, wants, and desires faster than you.

Microsoft defines business intelligence this way (https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/what-is-business-intelligence/):

Business intelligence (BI) helps organizations analyze historical and current data, so they can quickly uncover actionable insights for making strategic decisions. Business intelligence tools make this possible by processing large data sets across multiple sources and presenting findings in visual formats that are easy to understand and share.

The key to this is that business intelligence must provide a business with "actionable insights." Which customer segment should we spend our marketing dollars on? What trucks will be off the road next month for scheduled maintenance? How many hours has that pump been running since we put it into production? Who has signed up to bring cupcakes to the bake sale? These questions and many more are answered every hour of every day by businesses and governments around the world.

Power BI for business intelligence

Power BI is Microsoft's premier enterprise data visualization tool for modern businesses. Power BI is also Microsoft's reporting tool for "citizen developers." Power BI is easy enough to use that anyone with a familiarity with Microsoft Excel should be able to understand and use it. Power BI is also powerful enough that it is the primary reporting tool for some of the largest companies in the world.

Power BI allows users to create interactive reports that lead to actionable intelligence for business decision making. Although Power BI is usually thought of as a reporting tool, it's also a complete business intelligence solution. It can, and often is, the entry point for businesses that need to start making data-driven decisions. For some businesses, Power BI provides all the business intelligence they will ever need.

As you will find in this book, Power BI is a collection of services, applications, connectors, and software. These things all work together to turn your data into actionable insights by turning that data into interactive, immersive reports and dashboards. To do these things, Power BI requires data.

Data is at the heart of Power BI. But there is a huge problem in modern businesses…

Reporting challenges

Data is everywhere. One of the biggest challenges in modern businesses is trying to get an end-to-end view of what is happening now or what has happened in the past. Many businesses have data in disparate locations. Data is spread out, some of it on-premises and some in the cloud. Companies try to keep important data in large relational databases but many times, crucial information is contained in Excel spreadsheets or in a SharePoint document library.

It is often very difficult for modern business users to see a complete picture of what is happening across the entire enterprise.

Power BI provides an overall, holistic view of all data within your business, providing that single pane of glass that shows what is happening everywhere within the business. With Power BI, you can see dashboards and reports that display rich, interactive visualizations and KPIs from data that can be residing both on-premises and in the cloud.

It has been said that data is the new gold. Data is the new oil. Businesses value their data estates as much as their manufacturing equipment or supply chains. Your data is a valuable asset.

As businesses learn to use their data, they also learn the importance of having that data. But data is only useful if it can be turned into actions.

For example, Cerner is a global healthcare technology company. They track more than 80 million patient visits every year. Cerner uses Power BI to help streamline the healthcare process, providing valuable insights in seconds instead of the weeks it used to take.

It's not just used in healthcare. The world of retail is being transformed by access to real-time information. T-Mobile uses Power BI to grant front-line workers access to analytical data so they can do their jobs better. Managers and associates can see activations, scorecards, and traffic numbers as they are generated. This allows managers to immediately allocate resources where needed and associates to see whether they are meeting their goals.

Financial companies are usually at the forefront of modernization. It's not just the giants of finance that are adopting Power BI; Members 1st Credit Union is a small credit union located in rural Pennsylvania. Operating 56 small- to mid-sized branches meant that monthly reports took hundreds of employee hours to collate and analyze. By taking advantage of some of Power BI's data features, such as automated refreshes and drillthrough analysis, Members 1st was able to save more than 10,000 hours a year, which is huge for a small, rural financial institution. (Full disclosure, one of the authors banks at Members 1st.)

As you will see in upcoming chapters, not only can Power BI connect to many different data sources, but Power BI can also combine data sources. Power BI is designed from the ground up to allow a user to easily bring data from multiple sources together in one location. These connections allow you to see data from your Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system mixed with data in an Excel spreadsheet and GitHub data.

You can bring together data from hundreds of sources and mix them together to discover new facts, new correlations, and new data points about your business.

Power BI as a solution

Power BI has two main versions: Power BI Desktop and the Power BI service.

Power BI Desktop

Power BI Desktop is a visual data exploration and interactive reporting tool, providing a free-form canvas for drag-and-drop exploration of your data, an extensive library of interactive visualizations, and an authoring experience for ease of report creation for the Power BI service. It produces interactive reports and data models.

Power BI Desktop is a free, downloadable Windows desktop application optimized for the Power BI service. Although it is a Microsoft Office application, sharing much of its user interface with products such as Excel and Word, it does not require or depend on Microsoft Office.

With Power BI Desktop, you get an application that specializes in delivering interactive visualizations for data analysis. With it, you can manipulate and consolidate multiple data sources into one report, allowing you to see data from disparate sources on one pane of glass.

The Power BI service, sometimes referred to as app.powerbi.com, allows you to create beautiful visualizations to tell compelling data stories. It's optimized to build rich, live dashboards that turn data into business insights.

With the Power BI service, you can securely share reports, dashboards, and Power BI apps with other people in your company, or even with trusted vendors and partners. This secure sharing is one of the biggest reasons for the popularity of Power BI.

The Power BI service also allows you to see your data on the go. With the Power BI mobile app, you can securely see your reports and dashboards from anywhere in the world.

So, with all of the benefits of Power BI in mind, let's consider the certification.

Probably one of the biggest reasons to get certified in Power BI, or any technology really, is to demonstrate to your employer, or a future employer, that you understand and know what it does and how it works. Employers are often looking for people with knowledge and experience. Certification can let you easily demonstrate your knowledge.

Even if you are not looking for a new job, your PL-300 certification will demonstrate your Power BI knowledge to your boss, co-workers, and everyone who sees your LinkedIn profile.

Beyond just demonstrating technical knowledge, another key benefit is that you keep current with all the changes in Power BI. The process of gaining and keeping your PL-300 certification necessitates that you learn about Power BI.

Yes, that previous sentence said keeping your certification. Microsoft announced that starting December 15, 2020, you will have to renew your PL-300 certification every 2 years. We'll cover this more in the next section.