How Difficult is it to Learn Power BI?

Are you curious about learning Power BI but worry that it might be too hard? Of course, the difficulty that comes with acquiring a new skill is somewhat subjective. The challenges of learning Power BI depend on factors like prior data analytics and visualization training, experience working with Microsoft products, and general knowledge about business intelligence. 

No matter your current schedule or comfort level with Power BI, there are plenty of tools available to help make learning more manageable than you might think.

What is Power BI?

Microsoft Power BI is a group of BI (business intelligence) services and products that converts data from various sources into reports, visualizations, and interactive dashboards. This allows users to share data insights with others who work at their organization or to embed them onto a website or application. Power BI offers effective business solutions with each of its individual elements and provides users with even more capabilities when these components work together.

One of the main benefits of working with Power BI is that it can integrate with other Microsoft services and products and third-party platforms. Users can connect Power BI to Excel, Teams, SharePoint, and Exchange, among others. Whether your data is stored in an on-premises data warehouse, a cloud-based warehouse, or an Excel spreadsheet, Power BI can easily connect to these data sources, provide visualizations based on the data they contain, and offer insights that you can then share with other stakeholders. There are several Power BI products, each of which has different uses; Power BI Desktop creates reports, Power BI Services publishes the reports, and the Power BI mobile app provides users with a way to view each dashboard or report.

Read more about what Power BI is and why you should learn it.

What Can You Do with Power BI?

Power BI is a valuable tool for illustrating what’s happening within an organization in the present. It also has applications for helping to anticipate what may transpire in the future. Because it relies on machine learning capabilities, Power BI can locate patterns in data, then draw from these patterns to predict various “what-if” scenarios. Based on these predictions, Power BI users can create forecasts and work to prepare for different demand patterns that may emerge. They can then communicate this information through data visualizations, which impart key data findings to stakeholders to make more educated business predictions.

Power BI is a go-to for those who work with data because it can be used to input huge stores of data that would be a struggle for other platforms to process. Because this intelligence suite is cloud-based, it provides users with regularly updated algorithms and intelligence capabilities. Those who use Power BI can personalize their experience by creating dashboards that allow them to quickly and easily access necessary data. In addition, it’s possible to create alerts in Power BI, which provide users with up-to-date measurements. Best of all, because this platform can integrate with other business management tools, such as Office 365, SharePoint, SAP, Google Analytics, and Hadoop, it remains a hugely popular tool for those working with data across platforms. 

What Are the Most Challenging Parts of Learning Power BI?

Although Power BI is considered relatively easy to learn, there are still challenges involved with mastering this tool. One of the most difficult aspects of Power BI to learn is DAX, which is short for Data Analysis Expressions. Initially released in 2009 by Microsoft, DAX evolved from the MDX language for data cubes. In the years since, DAX has become common to data platforms such as SQL Server Analysis Services, PowerPivot, and Power BI. This library consists of functions and operations that have applications for creating formulas or expressions. In Power BI, this function language can be used to design custom tables, calculated columns, and measures. Some DAX formulas function similarly to standard Excel formulas, whereas others don’t, making it even more challenging to work with DAX. 

Unlike relational databases and SQL, which tend to be concrete and require little guesswork about data or processing commands, DAX is considered abstract regarding query content and data structure. Because some users consider it much more abstract than concrete, this can add to the difficulty of becoming familiar with DAX. Concrete learners may struggle to acquire this language, whereas those more abstractly minded may learn it faster. One of the best ways to learn DAX is to begin by studying how DAX views different data models and the context in which it works. A great way to study the role DAX plays in Power BI is to enroll in Noble Desktop’s Power BI Bootcamp, which teaches participants to work with DAX when creating data visualizations. 

How Does Learning Power BI Compare to Other Applications?

If you’re looking to compare Microsoft Power BI to other business intelligence tools and applications, several are available that can help professionals find actionable insights within their data. Domo is a low-code business cloud platform that allows users to easily combine their data and use it across various workflows and business processes. Domo is a powerful tool for creating customized, interactive dashboards and helping to make data accessible to those from all backgrounds. A free trial is currently available at Domo. Quotes for different price plans are also available on Domo’s website.

Another popular alternative to Power BI is Yellowfin. This embedded analytics platform offers users the tools for creating action-based dashboards, interactive data visualizations, automated analyses, and data-driven storytelling. Most Yellowfin users consider this tool to be easy to use because of its low-code user interface, as well as its AI-generated insights and automated alerts. Yellowfin provides a straightforward, scalable cost breakdown for its products. Quotes are available on Yellowfin’s website.

Zoho Analytics is another popular business intelligence and data analytics platform. This tool provides users with a variety of useful BI tools. Zoho Analytics users work with this platform to analyze data contained in different apps, databases, and files and create data visualizations that convey their findings. In addition, this tool makes it easy to create stunning dashboards and reports or monitor KPI metrics. Zoho Analytics offers a free trial and various pricing options starting at $24/user/month.

Professional Applications of Power BI

The following are just a few ways Power BI can help you in a data-related career:

• You can easily connect to data. Power BI simplifies the process of consolidating data into a single location. This can improve data visibility, accessibility, organization, and reporting. Because Power BI supports more than 70 connectors, your organization can load data from many cloud-based sources, like Excel spreadsheets, Azure, SalesForce, and Google Analytics.

• It provides security. Power BI users can manage user access and security from the same interface, so you won’t have to use additional products to ensure that regulatory standards are met. 

• Power BI provides accessible insights. Power BI isn’t just for Data Scientists or those with technical expertise. This software allows users to view or share visual reports in a basic manner or to opt to do so more thoroughly. Power BI was designed for beginners and professionals to easily explain patterns such as increases or decreases in data charts simply by clicking a button that enables automatic analysis of the data by using machine learning. 

• It has powerful data modeling capabilities. With the help of advanced data modeling techniques and predictive tools, Power BI can reliably predict future events by noticing trends. Power BI users can add predictions to line charts, which allows them to execute various “what-if” scenarios to make forecasts about finance or growth markets.

Why is Power BI so Popular?

In 2021, Power BI was named a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Analytics and BI Platforms for the fourteenth consecutive year. Power BI remains one of the most popular data analytics platforms for several reasons:

• Power BI provides users with AI capabilities, making it faster and easier to analyze data. It can bring datasets to life and transform them from raw numbers into interactive visual stories. It also makes business intelligence insights accessible to everyone, not just those with analytics training. 
• Power BI makes it easy to share content with others, which facilitates collaboration.
• Microsoft remains committed to constantly improving Power BI. New features are often added, and existing ones are regularly improved to make this app as up-to-date and helpful as possible.
• Power BI ensures that the dataset you’re working with is up-to-date. You can refresh data every day or even every hour. 

Learn Power BI with Hands-on Training at Noble Desktop

Noble Desktop's Power BI Bootcamp is an excellent option if you want to learn more about using Power BI. This project-based course prepares students to use Power Query for data querying, Power BI’s data model for connecting to datasets, and its report view for designing interactive data visualizations and dashboards. Students work with different case studies to learn how to work with various Power BI capabilities and this tool’s DAX language for creating visualizations based on their data. All students have the option of a free retake for up to one year to revisit the material and gain additional practice.

Another excellent learning option for individuals who are interested in working with Power BI is Noble Desktop’s Data Analytics Certificate. This intensive course is offered in the in-person and live online format and provides participants with hands-on instruction with core data analytics and business intelligence tools and programs. Those enrolled complete real-world projects using Microsoft Excel, Python, SQL, and Tableau and have the option of also taking the Power BI Bootcamp free of charge. All students receive instruction from an expert instructor and one-on-one mentoring.