Power BI (Business Intelligence) is a business analytics platform/service provided by Microsoft. This service aims to provide interactive visualizations and business intelligence, enabling the end-user to create individualized reports and dashboards independently.
Especially for retail businesses, Power BI helps them meet the dynamic customer demands in advance with actionable insights. Microsoft Power BI service is based on cloud service, which also offers a desktop-based interface. The desktop-based application by windows for PCs and desktops enables both publishing reports to the service.
Use of Microsoft Power BI
With the help of Power BI, problems could be solved easily, and opportunities could be identified with less effort. This is made possible as the updation of dashboards in real-time, which would allow viewers to solve the issues related to it. The data is streamed in to provide such as service. This streaming is done with factory sensors or social media or other means of collecting time-sensitive data. The process is made very simple as there is no emailing or sharing of large files over a shared drive rather, analysts upload the data and visualizations, which gets refreshed every time it is updated.
Apart from these, an app navigation experience enables the analyst to customize the navigation procedure, thereby helping the viewer trace content easily and identify the relationships of different reports and dashboards.
The prime benefit of the Microsoft Power BI is that there is no essential requirement of training for the use of services such as Microsoft Dynamics. The service includes a setup that is understandable to all and provides insights swiftly.
Open and Manage Multiple Stores
When a new company is being established globally, there are more chances of reaching a greater audience. Hence there are more challenges to be dealt with as all the company branches should never compromise on the quality of the products. All the issues must be fixed without  delay.
When introduced into the retail industry, the Power BI can solve all such related issues as they do not static reports rather would enable interactive data analytics. The technology makes it possible to take advantage of reporting and analytics. This helps in revealing the variant patterns of sales, regulations, inventory and even marks the margin of products based on the location of the store. Hence there occurs an optimization of the processes all around the stores of the company. Moreover, Business Intelligence provides insight into the problems such as why the customers are not buying products and why certain stores are not functioning properly, which could be rectified with effect.
When we code and structure a multi-tenant application, we must take heed to choose a model that suits the application precisely. The Power BI can also find this application as an innate part of the application. With Power BI embedded, there are dual approaches, both equally quintessential, in separating the tenants, such as the Workspace-based isolation and Row level security-based isolation.
Fluctuating Customer trends
These days customers do not blindly choose product. They conduct a lot of research and do a background study of the product review. This depicts that information rules the market nowadays, and hence companies should aim to provide pertinent and processed data that would meet the customers’ requirements in real-time. Companies should target to keep the loyalty of the old customers along with attracting new ones.
Insights on customer necessities and expectations would be required to manage these. Companies should give prime importance to images while marketing their products. This is mainly because the human cognitive system and brain can process and memorize them much easier than other forms of representation.
Using Power BI, aggregated and enriched data can be comprehended and process vividly. The technology enables an amalgamation of both data visualization and exploration capabilities.
It is often difficult to understand the change in customer trends over time, especially when there are a lot of customers. At this point of time, you should think of a model on which you shall showcase the customer insights. Later, we need to fragment it into segments that eventually help us construct a model where we will get a deeper insight into the customer requirements. Create groups of customers where a calculated column would rank them in particular groups. These grouping techniques could be highly effective in understanding the customer insights, which would elevate the profit gained.
Increased Data Points
Since there are several data points in a retail outlet, it would be challenging to manage all. The use of these data might also be limited; something often left unnoticed. Besides, the data could also be in different formats or maybe fragmented or semi-structured. With deviant and varied data points, companies can choose between Excel or Power BI amenities.
There are various differences, both pros, and cons. Excel sheets have dominated the field for a long time and are useful in keeping a clean database of all the data points. However, with the help of Power BI, there will be zero wastage of both times as well as energy.
Overcoming Challenges
Power Bi can solve the various challenges that are reported effectively within lesser time. In the past, software such as Excel was used in reporting data, which was not a business intelligence tool.
Power Bi provides great accessibility, visibility, and insights into the data by combining them and grouping them into a single location. The other prime benefits are that very little manual workforce is needed, but still, it makes it possible for companies to gather deeper insights of customers.
In addition to that, Power BI enables sharing dashboards to everyone in the company, which gives clear insights into business essentials. Apart from that, security permissions can also be set while sharing these files to have an idea on who should view the data, who shall edit it, and so on.
Since it is a tool meant for everyone, it does not require any coding skills or prior knowledge. Hence all of the personals who sue it can benefit from it equally. It holds several visualizations which are completely dynamic and can be explored to a great extend. The detailing is far more than what can be made available in Excel.
The machine learning capabilities help us discover insights that are not impossible in other basic reporting tools. We will be able to explore our data by proposing a processable and refined question. It also aids in uncovering new information and piercing into new visualization.