Business Intelligence (BI) is now at the forefront of the business strategies of most growing organisations. Data collection, analysis, and BI reporting have fast become crucial to any major business decisions. Most business leaders and PMOs want to adopt BI and data analytics for their project management processes. They have a growing list of reasons to use BI tools such as Power BI for project management. 

What is Business Intelligence

BI is a collection of strategies, apps, tools, techniques that are applied with an aim to mine and analyse data. It provides the infrastructure for companies so they can process data for making informed business decisions.

How does BI work for businesses

Depending on your business processes and the nature of your projects, you can use BI in several ways. Primarily, BI does the following for data relevant to your business –

• Collect
• Organize
• Summarize
• Analyze
• Visualize

A BI infrastructure can make the above possible, but what helps leveraging BI to its full potential is having a clear strategy. A BI solution is only as good as its alignment to your business goals. With a clear strategy and implementation of the BI solution, senior executives can leverage data in a way that gives them a competitive advantage.

As a business leader or Project Management Lead, you need to ask the following questions when adopting BI –

• Do I understand the full scope of the capabilities of BI?
• How can I make the adoption of BI easier for my organization?
• Which is the best BI tool for my teams?
• How can I leverage BI for project management?

Business Intelligence tool – Microsoft Power BI

Microsoft Power BI is a self-service BI solution that allows you to visualize data and create interactive experiences for the users. According to Microsoft, you can “connect to and visualize any data using the unified, scalable platform for self-service and enterprise business intelligence (BI) that’s easy to use and helps you gain deeper data insight.”

Here’s the available versions of Power BI

Power BI Desktop

Power BI Service

Power BI Pro

Power BI Premium

Power BI Mobile

Power BI Embedded

Power BI Report Server

6 reasons to use Power BI for Project Management

Here’s why you need to adopt Power BI for project management in your organization.

1. Power BI is a recognized industry leader

Microsoft is a known leader when it comes to software solutions. Gartner recognized Microsoft as a leader in the Gartner 2022 Magic Quadrant for Analytics and Business Intelligence Platforms for the thirteenth year in a row. Take advantage of global data centres and national clouds to set up your own compliance needs. This confirms that you will be using the best possible tool for your project management and reporting.

2. Rely on highest security standards

Power BI data allows you to apply sensitivity labels using Microsoft information protection. Microsoft cloud app security allows Power BI users to prevent data and loss as they have more control and governance. Using Power BI security with service tags, Azure Private Link, and Azure Virtual Network, you get higher protection for organizational data. This makes it much easier to trust your project data with this BI solution.

3. Quick and simple to connect

Power BI makes it much easier to keep your data in one place, making it all the easier to access, organize, and share. It is capable of supporting over 70 connectors. You get access to a wide range of cloud-based sources such as Azure (Azure Data Warehouse), DropBox, Google Analytics, OneDrive, Spreadsheet, and more for storing and sharing data. Once connected, you can easily create project and portfolio dashboards that would help you visualize all your project data in one place. You can even customize these dashboards to suit your project processes within each portfolio. Higher visibility improves project reporting at the department level, which makes decision making at the executive level more efficient.

4. Custom project data visualization

Different projects require you to analyze a variety of data sets. You may also need to present this data in different formats such as bar graphs, pie-charts, etc. Power BI comes with a variety of pre-designed data graphics that make your project reports easy to comprehend and also interactive. You can choose from a range of graphics such as tables, bar, waterfall, matrix, line, correlation points, and more to create interesting reports based on the type of data involved. You can even customize graphics to present the data in the way best suited for your projects.

5. Use real-time information

Power BI-enabled dashboards get updated with real-time information. Project managers have several tasks on their hands, but manually updating the data shouldn’t have to be one. Data streaming accurately captures data as soon as its available. Project teams and team leaders don’t have to wait for just one person to manage all the data. You end up saving time, resources, while reducing the scope of errors.

6. Get data-backed insights

One of the biggest advantages of using Power BI is that it can capture insights hidden in your data. Analyzing data doesn’t just mean making sense of the data available, but also finding new insights relevant to your business. It empowers both beginners and experts to interpret data in new ways with interactive visualization. Want to see who is responsible for a specific project tasks, do a quick health check for all the projects in your portfolio, or see what the specific spike in costs mean for your project timeline? It is possible to track and analyze such information just with a few clicks with Power BI. Once again, you can easily monitor and share such information with your project teams with minimum time and effort.

BrightWork 365 solution leveraging Power BI for project management

BrightWork 365 is a project and portfolio management solution for Microsoft 365 that leverages Microsoft Power BI for portfolio, program, and project reporting.

Power BI dashboards and reports can help senior executives and PMO leads to easily access, analyze, and act on project data. BrightWork 365 uses Microsoft Power BI to provide real-time insights into project performance, tasks, and resource allocation across multiple projects.

Five benefits of using Microsoft Power BI with BrightWork 365 include:

1. Interactive reports provide detailed insights with real-time visibility into performance, tasks, and resource allocation.
2. With easy access to the right data, identifying projects that are delivering value or that need extra attention becomes straightforward.
3. Power BI simplifies and enhances project reporting for senior executives, PMO leads, and project managers.
4. Power BI connects to Microsoft applications like SharePoint, Excel, and Dataverse, and non-Microsoft applications such as Salesforce.
5. Power BI is part of the Microsoft Power Platform, a low-code development platform that allows organizations to create custom solutions.