What to Learn After Power BI

Power BI is one of the most widely used data analytics and business intelligence tools currently available. This collection of apps, connectors, and software services is used to transform unrelated data sources into coherent, interactive, visually accessible insights. If you already know how to use Power BI, you might consider learning other analytics platforms, such asTableau, Qlik Sense, or Domo. We’ll cover each of these below so you clearly understand what skill you want to tackle next. 

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 to Learn After Power BI

If you’ve mastered Power BI, you may consider learning other comparable tools for data analytics. Tableau, Qlik Sense, and Domo are three popular options you can consider adding to your analytics tool belt.

Tableau

Tableau is a visual analytics platform created to help users simplify raw data and create stunning visualizations to convey the insights found in the data. Since it was founded in 2003, Tableau has grown into the leading analytics platform for those who work with business intelligence. Tableau has many helpful features and tools, such as data-blending, collaboration, and real-time analysis. Tableau provides Python and R integration and additional data analytic features like rapid cohort analysis, predictive capabilities, and complex calculations. 

A great way to learn more about Tableau is to enroll in Noble Desktop’s Tableau Level 1, an introductory-level course, or their in-person and live online Tableau Bootcamp, which covers more advanced Tableau data visualization skills. 

Qlik Sense

Qlik Sense is a modern cloud analytics and self-service data visualization application that was created to be used by individuals, groups, or organizations. This app’s associative technology allows users to quickly explore data using hyperfast calculation capabilities. Nearly 40,000 people use Qlik Sense for their data management and visualization needs. This product can connect and combine data from hundreds of different sources. It provides state-of-the-art visualization capabilities, machine learning capabilities, and AI-generated suggestions.

Domo

Domo is a cloud-based business intelligence platform. It allows users to view their data in one place, create accountability across an organization, and share essential goals with others. This tool makes it easy to create customized, interactive dashboards and share analytics in a secure environment with both partners and customers. Domo allows users to view their strategic metrics graphically and provides the tools to help them analyze, monitor, and manage critical processes and activities. Organizations that use Domo can make more informed business decisions faster and share their findings with various stakeholders.

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.

Key Insights

• Microsoft Power BI is one of the most widely used data analytics and business intelligence platforms. 
• Power BI relies on machine learning capabilities to locate patterns in the data, which can predict different “what-if” scenarios for organizations to use to prepare for different possible outcomes.
• If you’ve already learned Power BI, you may consider becoming familiar with other BI or visual analytics platforms, such as Tableau, Qlik Sense, or Domo.
• If you want to learn more about how to work with Power BI, Noble Desktop offers comprehensive in-person and live online study options in business analytics, data analytics, and data visualization.