Are you riding the wave of Power BI?

While there are still organisations that have not heard about or not experimented with Power BI, many adopted the new approach and benefit in small or big way.

Gil Raviv writes in his excellent blog about four stages of maturity in the organization’s journey to adopt Power BI.  The four stages are:

1. Hiding behind the wave barrier
2. Throwing pebbles in the pond
3. Riding the tidal wave
4. Reaching the other side of the whirlpool

Before exploring the four stages, Gil starts with a case that can be considered as Stage 0, a case which I personally experienced some 3 years ago, and which still is a case for many large companies.

Here’s Gil:
“There are no waves in this stage because there is only sand – A lot of sand and a stubborn ostrich that is ignoring reality. You can find organizations that keep their head in the sand when their data analysts never heard of Power BI.

While there are many reasons that can explain the lack of awareness to Power BI’s existence (For example, “Power BI is a young product”; “We don’t use Excel”, “I thought Excel didn’t change in the last 20 years”, “Microsoft hid these features”), I think that organizations should do a better job to proactively invest in training and awareness of Power BI (and not just as a visualization tool).

(…) There are no more excuses. Power BI lives inside Excel as Power Pivot and Power Query for a long time now. If you work in a company where an entire team of data scientists or analysts are not aware of Power Query, Power Pivot or Power BI, it’s time to take an action. It is sad to see very brilliant people using Excel but ignoring the Power BI engines in it.

You can be very strong at SAS, or R or Python or VBA or VLOOKUP, or INDEX/MATCH or SUMIFS in Excel, but if you don’t use the Power Query, or Power Pivot in Excel and/or Power BI, then it’s time to get your head out of the sand.

It is also time to insist that Power BI is part of any training curriculum. If you are studying right now in a Data Science program somewhere in a modern college or university, and have no class about Power BI, it’s time to take a stand.”

Sound familiar? Continue reading Gil Raviv’s blog about the four stages to handle Power BI momentum.

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