Power BI is Microsoft’s business intelligence service. It provides self-service visualisations, dashboards, and business intelligence capabilities. Power BI is one of the best available tools for interactive dashboards providing trend analysis.
Jet Reports, a solution from insightsoftware, allows you to get all the financial & operational data you need, directly in Excel. From advanced business reports to sophisticated financial statements, there is no exporting, no copying and pasting, and no programming, ever.
Dashboards only as good as the data source allows
The common factor to creating the best business dashboards from Power BI and Jet Reports is the data.
Power BI offers over 120 free data connectors. Data sources include Dynamics 365, Azure SQL Database, Salesforce, Excel, and SharePoint.
The Jet data models consist of OLAP (Online Analytical Processing) cubes and tabular models. This means you can easily report inside Excel or Power BI, with no coding and without requiring technical expertise.
An OLAP Cube is a data structure that allows fast analysis of data according to the multiple dimensions that define a business problem.
Using Jet Analytics data with Power BI
Power BI offers a great data visualisation tool. To take full advantage, you will want to ensure that the data you are using is in the best format possible.
If your business uses complicated data sets, Jet Cubes provide an excellent intermediary to organise your data before connecting your data into Power BI.
Watch the video to learn more https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfB5Kzqyq7w&feature=youtu.be
Jet Reports vs Jet Analytics – what’s the difference?
We are often asked the differences between Jet Reports and Jet Analytics. Jet Reports is a reporting solution, allowing companies to create reports directly within Excel, whereas Jet Analytics is a data warehousing tool, which allows companies to organise their data in an easy-to-read set of cubes. Allowing for easier reporting and dashboard creation.
Jet Reports are Excel-based reports pulling data directly from Dynamics NAV, 365 Business Central.
Jet Analytics can consolidate data from various data sources, creating one set of data cubes, that gives users the capability to create business intelligence dashboards and manage their data more effectively.
Microsoft Power BI or Jet Reports for financial and operational reporting?
With all reporting tools, if you compare like-for-like features there are always pros and cons. Both options deliver insightful dashboards & reporting, it will come down to what your business wants to achieve as to which is best. Power BI wins with visual engagement, however, Jet Reports allows you to create easy-to-use reports directly within Excel, using all of Excel’s great functionality. Using Jet Analytics as your data connector for Power BI allows for consistent decision-making with the powerful visualisation your users want. Everyone sees the data through the same scope.