Excel is a powerful spreadsheet application that can do just about anything, including creating interactive panels. However, as businesses grow and customers become more demanding, the need for sophisticated data analysis will exceed the capabilities of Excel. Fortunately, new technologies such as business intelligence (BI) have emerged to provide companies with more capabilities. Power BI is a business-oriented set of tools, software services, and business intelligence applications that can handle large volumes of data effortlessly.
It also offers faster processing than Excel and is easily used from mobile devices. Power BI dashboards are more visually appealing, interactive, and customizable than Excel dashboards.Power BI can connect to a large number of data sources, while Excel's connectivity capacity is limited. It also allows you to easily combine and merge different sets of data. Excel is very limited when it comes to handling large amounts of data.
For example, opening a spreadsheet file with too many megabytes or rows can cause the tool to display an error message. To solve this problem, you must divide the main file into smaller files, which can affect data analysis. Microsoft Excel is often referred to as the number one business intelligence (BI) tool because it is one of the most used applications. For smaller companies, Excel is a useful tool for simple calculations and analyses. However, as your business grows and customers become more difficult to maintain, your need for sophisticated data analysis will exceed the capabilities of Excel. Power BI, on the other hand, is a business-oriented set of tools, software services, and business intelligence applications.
In other words, Power BI is a platform with a more limited focus than Excel, namely, data processing in business environments, although it can be used in other sectors. Get a few hours of professional experience in Excel, and you'll soon find that you're having trouble updating formulas and other advanced tools. As technology has led to the rise of powerful tools that have more functionality compared to Excel, a large number of finance professionals are clinging to Excel. Because of these integrations and the fact that you probably already have some experience with Microsoft Office tools, I think Power BI is superior to other business intelligence options out there. Excel and Power BI are also regularly updated, and each new edition brings new features and improvements. But that doesn't mean there aren't advantages to using Power BI, especially in combination with Excel.
As companies adapt and become more digital, so does the amount of data available to track and analyze. Excel and Power BI work very well together, especially if you use Excel to process data and Power BI to present and share it. It's almost certain that you've used Microsoft Excel at some point, whether you're a data analysis professional or if you work with data. If you're reading this blog and you're an accountant, you'll love to know that Phocas has financial statement software that works in conjunction with its core business intelligence product and Excel. In conclusion, while Excel is still a great tool for smaller companies for simple calculations and analyses, as businesses grow they will need more sophisticated data analysis capabilities than what Excel can offer. Business intelligence tools such as Power BI are better suited for this purpose as they offer faster processing speeds and more visually appealing dashboards that are interactive and customizable.
