Business analysis glossary
Power BI
What it is
Power BI is a business intelligence tool from Microsoft for connecting to data, modelling it, calculating measures and building interactive reports and dashboards. Analysts use it to turn raw data into visuals that decision makers can explore. The usual flow is to connect to data sources, shape and clean the data, define relationships, write measures and then build report pages that users can filter and explore.
Why it matters
Knowing the concepts behind it, such as data models, relationships, measures and filters, helps an analyst specify reports clearly and check that numbers are right, whichever tool is used. Not every analyst builds the final report, but one who understands the concepts can write requirements that developers can implement exactly.
Example
At Lumen Retail, an analyst loads sales and store tables into Power BI, relates them by store number, writes a measure for total revenue and builds a page with a map and a monthly trend for regional managers. Managers can then click a region and see the numbers change instantly, which saves the analyst from producing a separate spreadsheet for every question.