Microsoft Power BI Consulting Services2024-02-15T13:36:01-06:00

Microsoft Power BI Consulting Services

Power BI is the go-to analytics platform to visualize data across business users in all functions. Are you sufficiently staffed to support the growing demand of your citizen developers?

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Perfect if your organization is in need of immediate help to alleviate bandwidth or skilling issues

Smartbridge has been providing business intelligence and data management services since 2003 and in the course of our vast project experience, we have seen the use of Power BI soar. Now as a leader in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant with their unified and scalable platform, your organization may be on Power BI whether you planned it or not.

Common Pain Points with Power BI

  • You need to scramble to standardize your Power BI enterprise, likely due to business decisions to migrate without proper governance and rollout plans in place.

  • Individual (free and Pro) licenses are proliferating across all business functions. User management is de-centralized.

  • Dashboards are being developed by a variety of users, shared in numerous ways, and data refreshes are suffering for it.

  • Data refreshes are failing and performance is being hindered causing growing frustration throughout the business.

  • Other tools such as Tableau or MicroStrategy are also in play, and the vast array of skills needed to support a robust BI tech stack are in short supply.

  • Fabric has been introduced into Power BI, bringing with it AI capabilities like never before. Where do you even begin with capitalizing on these features?

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Power BI Support at a Glance

Implementation, Migration & Rollout Plan

Planning a Power BI enterprise deployment? It’s not uncommon to make a plan around converting hundreds of individual (free and Pro) licenses to Premium. Or, as the case may be, keep users on Pro licenses, but create an ecosystem that supports application lifecycle management and future demand.

Deploy Power BI Reports & Dashboard Design

Smartbridge recommends the creation of a dashboard catalog. This catalog takes into account – user experience design, standard and custom visualizations (e.g. ArcGisMaps, Chord, Network Navigation, etc.) as well as advanced analytics and quick insights. Our successful track record with clients encompasses key capabilities such as business requirements workshops, reports, metrics rationalization, change management, end-user training, and self-service enablement.

Data Warehouse Management

Sometimes Power BI issues are a symptom of backend data issues. Do you need resources equipped to assess your data architecture, integration, and quality? Insights from your data visualizations are only as good as the sources behind the curtain.

Power BI Enterprise Gateway

One of the biggest decisions is whether an enterprise gateway is necessary. Do you need your sources to be local, on the cloud, or hybrid? As demand grows, the potential need for a Power BI Gateway can be accommodated in your future-state rollout plans.

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Power BI Compliance

When there are no standardized operating procedures in place, regulatory compliance is at the mercy of each individual contributor. The key to compliance with GDPR, HIPAA, and various other responsibilities includes data classification and accountability, identity and access management, and host infrastructure.

PRO TIP: Ideal solutions for identity and access management include Azure Active Directory

Governance Framework

A self-service data governance model is key to continued security, compliance and efficiency.  Whether it’s business-led or IT-managed, defining roles and offering training of standardized datasets is a must.

PRO TIP: Smartbridge provides a Power BI Bootcamp program that can be offered as a turn-key solution to training and certifying your citizen developers.

Power BI Center of Excellence or User Group

Finally, once the dust settles on efforts to get Power BI dashboards, users, and data management standardized, it’s time to think bigger. A Power BI Center of Excellence (CoE) or User Group could empower your users with the perfect amount of access, governance, and templates by designating a formal committee to optimize business processes around Power BI.

PRO TIP: A CoE or User Group is not as daunting as it sounds, but it is best to deploy early in your platform adoption.

Want more insight for a successful Power BI adoption? Download our extensive Power BI Adoption Framework to jump-start your Power BI journey today.

Power BI Adoption Framework
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Extend Power BI with Power Automate!

The Microsoft Power Platform is a robust set of connected applications that perform even better together. In addition to Smartbridge’s business intelligence services with Power BI, get to know Power Automate.

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