Artificial Intelligence with Microsoft Power BI

Chapter 1. Getting Started with AI in the Enterprise: Your Data

Power BI is Microsoft’s flagship business analytics service that provides interactive visualizations and business intelligence capabilities. Power BI is a business-focused technology with an easy-to-use interface that makes it easy to underestimate its power. In this chapter, let’s explore the essential ingredient of getting the most out of Power BI: getting your data ready.

What problems are specific to the self-service data preparation domain? As anyone who has tried to merge data in Excel knows, cleaning data is a frustrating and lengthy process. It can be exacerbated by mistakes in formulas and human error, as well as having access only to a sample dataset. Moreover, the business analysts may not have straightforward access to the data in the first place. Business teams may have to procure data from across business silos, adding delays to an already frustrating process. Sometimes, they may even bend existing business processes or push boundaries to get the data they need. The frustration they feel gets in the way of exercising creativity when it comes to analyzing the data. Many organizations have a hidden industry of Excel spreadsheets that comprise the “little data” that runs the business. Often, IT cannot get any visibility into these data “puddles,” so it cannot manage them or exercise its role as guardian of the data.

According to David Allen’s Get Things Done methodology, there is clear strategic value in ...