Power BI can be treated as a Business Analytic tool and not only BI? What are the levels for this?

[brunozanoelo]

According to Shmueli (Getting Started with Business Analytics Insightful Decision-Making David Roi Hardoon and Galit Shmueli), there are different levels of Analytics from Business Intelligence to Business Analytic. In face of this, I have some questions and toughts that may help PowerBI users and help me to understand more about this amazing plataform.

See the image below.

As far as I know, Power BI embrace the following steps:
1) Standard Reports
2) AD-HOC
3) Query Drilldown

Doesn't have or I have doubts with:
4) Alerts
- Power BI don't have the funcionatility to send e-mails or alerts when your indicator reachs a specific value. There's any ticket for future release?

5) Statistical Analysis
- I've seen one new visualization that may help this, it work with influencers. May it work?
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/visuals/power-bi-visualization-influencers

In this level, we go beyond the descriptive realms of “what” and “where.” The data are analyzed using statistical models in an attempt to understand why the event occurred. Such causal knowledge enables understanding how to identify, prevent, and take control of events, which then guides decision making.

6) Forecasting
- I always ask my self and this year I'm planning to go further on this. There's any sample to do forecasting in Power BI? This is one part that we actually lose users for Tableau. With Tableay I've created sales forecast in less than 10 minutes. How can I do forecasting with Power BI? This forum have any materials to do this? (I haven't saw many) What are the features that Microsoft has and is planning for this?

7) Predictive Modelling
https://www.marquam.com/Documents/Advanced%20Analytics%20with%20Power%20BI%20White%20Paper.pdf
Good Starter material. The question is: Should I work directly with R to do Predictive Modelling in PowerBI? I have my doubts...

😎 Optimisation 
Optimization methods combine the generated intelligence to optimize business processes or objectives,
given operational and other constraints. This level,utilizing causal insights, forecasts and/or predictions from
previous levels, answers questions such as “How to maximize profit subject to infrastructure constraints? How to
optimally allocate resources subject to a set of priorities?”

I never used the AI of PowerBI (Cortana), however, this can be used? Never had one single example of information gathering that actually prooved Cortana to be smart enough to understand all the patterns.

Hope we get more opinions and toughts about this topic, since PowerBI is growing and improving each month, I really wanted to go further in my graphs and to understand the limitations and future releases that are included in those levels.

Best Regards,
Bruno

[v-shex-msft]

Hi @brunozanoelo ,

#1,Power bi service contain alert features, but it not as good as you wanted. Current it only works on specific visuals, you can refer to following link to know more about this:

Data alerts in Power BI service

#2, I don't think key influencers visual can fully reproduce your requirement.

#3, Power bi contains some analytics features(listed in 'analytics pane'), but they have a few limitations when you use these features:

Using the Analytics pane in Power BI Desktop

#4,For r script, I'd like to suggest you take a look at these links:

Create Power BI visuals using R

Run R scripts in Power BI Desktop

Creating R visuals in the Power BI service

#5, Power bi can interaction with cortana, please refer to following links to know how to configure them:

Use Power BI service or Power BI Desktop to create a custom Answer Page for Cortana
Quickly find and view your Power BI data using Cortana for Power BI

Set up and test Cortana for Power BI in your organization

Regards,

Xiaoxin Sheng

[brunozanoelo]

Thank you for the feedback @v-shex-msft ! Will take a look in the documents!

Best Regards,

Bruno