Benefits of Power BI for Financial Reporting
Finance these days isn’t merely a department or a vertical. The highly competitive and uncertain business landscape has compelled businesses to think differently and treat finance as a strategy. Thus, financial reporting, which earlier was a quarterly or annual exercise, has become more frequent. Nowadays, decision-makers meet pretty often to discuss the company’s financial health and make informed financial decisions to ensure the company thrives amidst challenges and stormy situations.
However, it must be understood that financial reporting is a challenging task. The reports experts present should be intuitive enough to simplify the interpretation process and thus make sense for people running the organization. Accordingly, experts use financial reporting tools. One of the most widely used ones is Power BI.
Power BI isn’t exclusively meant for financial reporting. Instead, it is a comprehensive business intelligence platform. However, its FP&A function has evolved significantly over the years and gained popularity across the business horizon. The tool has incomparable analytical capabilities and advanced data visualizations making it competent in driving higher data literacy and achieving a better financial understanding. However, there’s more to it. So, let’s see some benefits of Power BI for financial reporting.
7 Benefits of Power BI for Financial Reporting
Power BI is developed into the Microsoft ecosystem and has similarities with Excel, thus making it straightforward for the finance team to adapt to working on it. The tool is equipped with the ability to combine, transform, and use data from multiple sources through sophisticated calculations. While these aspects contribute to Power BI’s position, here are seven aspects that make it a standout for financial reporting.
1. Effective Data Visualization
Power BI enhances financial reporting with its effective and powerful data visualization capabilities. The tool can transform massive or complicated datasets into useful insights telling stories about the company’s financial performance.
You can also make visualizations more interactive with slicers enabling report viewers to filter data visualizations in various ways to view the most relevant information. It proves a valuable feature, especially when finance professionals have to share a single financial report with heads across various verticals having unique commercial objectives.
2. Efficient Excel Integration
For years, Excel has been the default tool for financial calculations and analysis. As stated earlier, Power BI shares similarities with Excel. Hence, it is easy to use. Despite that, your team may resist including Power BI in the ecosystem. That’s normal, though.
However, what makes Power BI even more interesting and useful is that it can seamlessly integrate with Excel. Thus, your users can use the best features of both tools and use the capabilities of one to enhance those of the other.
For instance, Power BI allows you to import data from numerous Excel files and create a straightforward and effective visualization. The result is more comprehensive and intuitive reporting the decision-makers and stakeholders will easily understand.
3. Shared Dashboards
Given the dynamic business environment, inter-departmental collaboration and decision-making have become a crucial aspect in driving organizational success. While providing access to real-time data, Power BI, with its cloud-powered remote visibility, allows users to share dashboards with other departments, thus enabling them to look at the same data and make decisions based on that. Furthermore, automatic updates and a shared single source of truth eliminate reporting disparities.
4. Broader Data Access
Power BI can access a much broader array of financial data sources than Excel. Additionally, it can connect seamlessly with all of them. It simplifies automating reporting processes and pulls data from numerous sources to transform it into a unified report. The result is more centralized information and the elimination of the need to alternate between reports to understand the financial data.
5. Comprehensive Data Capabilities
Power BI is more robust and capable concerning its analytical capabilities. Excel undoubtedly has its unique abilities and features. For instance, users prefer Excel for manipulating data and tabular reporting formats. However, Power BI enables better combination of data across sources and keeping it in a single place.
6. Integration with Planning Tools
Users can easily integrate Power BI with various advanced comprehensive planning tools. Businesses can use it to align various business units and build capabilities required to decode the market and its uncertainties and make more accurate economic projections.
7. Real-Time Financial Forecasting and Planning
Earlier, businesses used old data to make financial projections. However, given the highly dynamic nature of the market, finance experts now need real-time and updated data to make informed projections and devise educated strategies. With automated data updates and live dashboards, Power BI makes it possible.
Maintaining sound financial health is crucial for survival and accomplishing organizational pecuniary goals. Technology plays a significant role in it. Tools like Power BI, as you’ve already seen, help companies pave the way to better financial management by leveraging data meaningfully.
Creating and presenting a financial report in Power BI isn’t merely effortless but empowering, considering the numerous features and benefits the tool offers. Hence, integrating Power BI into the financial ecosystem can prove advantageous for the company. The Power BI developers you choose will have a critical role to play in this regard.
Connect with FidelTech, if you’ve been looking for qualified and experienced Power BI developers in Japan. Our comprehensive Power BI expertise and years of experience in the tool have helped us earn a competitive edge and enable our clients to achieve financial reporting excellence. Please write to us at infofidel@fideltech.com to interact with our Power BI developers and Power BI capabilities.
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