“Without Data you’re just another person with an opinion” —Edwards Deming – Data Scientist
Blog 15: Power BI vs Tableau. David vs Goliath 🙂
The question everyone wants to know. If I typed this question into Google I would probably get the same thing everyone probably knows, “Tableaus license is expensive”, “Power BI cheaper to run”, “Tableau looks richer” blah blah I get it.
I am going to keep this fairly simple as I’ve used Tableau for 1 year, and have used Power BI for just under 1 year. Below are my views.
View 1: There is no doubt Tableau’s main strength is the rich Data Visualisation tool it gives to users. My question is this though, because a tool has a rich Data Visualisation as a USP does this mean users are guaranteed to understand specifics with its data? Not always. When trying to dive deep into specific trends with Data, I feel this is actually not as flexible as people think. I don’t mean standard analysis like e.g.
-Total Sales by Region, Profit Margin by Month, Overall Cost by Quarter. This is standard analysis anyone who uses BI wants to see. What I mean by flexible is, I want to know my “Top Rank Number for Regions and Customers dynamically (So Top 5, 10,15 you choose) for my Revenue, Cost, or Profit all in 1 chart to show Overall Running Total in that year and quarter, maybe also comparing this to 1 Quarter Ago, and also 2 Quarter Ago”. This probably sounds really confusing, but if you view below link it will make more sense.
This is what I like about Power BI is the fact I have a Data Model in the background if setup correctly, I can understand my analysis from multiple perspectives and one source of truth within a model.
View 2: I feel there a massive misconception that Power BI Visual just don’t look as rich or nice. I feel this is also because most things Power BI shows it looks standards white background not much colour schemes. Example link below shows. My view is even though Power BI does not naturally give rich visuals like Tableau, just spending extra time making them look compelling is important! This is where I always create and use JSON files with specific HEX Codes. And sometimes even better adding a background image giving a more personalised feel!
View 3: Just wanted to let everyone know though, don’t read this section as I am trying to give all negatives around Tableau. I think it is probably useful to give specific examples to compare. Most things I read online are fairly generic high level. I mean last 11 years Gartner has ranked Tableau in the quadrant of a leader. So, it is obviously an excellent BI tool to have. Example, Tableau Maps I think are excellent compared to Power BI, even though Power BI are developing this area significantly with Custom Visuals. You will see I don’t really post many visuals with Maps, I guess the reason why is I have not really developed this area fully yet, but keen to start soon. I just think it is interesting how in the past 6-8 years Power BI has emerged as a real contender within analytics, as is slightly over-taking Tableau for its “Completeness of Vision”
Microsoft Example
https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/partner-showcase/kpmg-kodehealthcare/
US Sales Analytics (My report, Enhanced Visual)
Blog 14:
I am really surprised that the link to blog 11 has had nearly 400 (378 to be specifc) unique clicks. As I can see this kind of analytics is so interesting to know, i’ve started on a new application for DTCC New Trades. More to be added with time.
Blog 13: Quarterly Analysis – End of Year
Blog 12:Customer Sales Deep Dive
Blog 11: – Data Update 13/07/2018 – Global Trade and Transactional Reporting
DTCC Public Reports & a Thank You from me!
So finally im so delighted to be sharing the DTCC Global Trade and Transactional Reporting. First of all I want to say a massive thank u to all people on the Word Press Community. I finally have over 2,340 people following me and serioulsy am so grateful!!!
But I will say for sure I will keep this Microsoft Link coming in! To show everyone what I’ve made! Interesting to know the Blog 07 – Profit and Loss Reporting over a year has had the most Clicks! Thank u and will keep this in mind when creating further analytics!
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So moving on. below is the link to showcase Trade and Transactional Reporting i’ve been doing! This probably has been the hardest BI Analytics piece of work i’ve done, as the data is based on 28 separate excel CSV within a folder, so have had to do a lot of automation in Power Query to create a parameter on the folder files! Anyways hope you guys enjoy!
Blog 10:
Business Analysis – Daily Metric View
Web Analytics – Daily Metric View
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So, I’ve been recently trying to understand and teach myself how to create a certain Power BI Dashboard / Report that can show data in whatever format of data fields you have.
This dashboard report view I feel is truly great because of the flexibility it has. It can be used for so many different types of businesses. To name a few…
- Automotive – Comparing Units for specific models to get a daily view
- Financial Services – Understand trades within a given Asset Type (daily)
- Web site traffic – would you like to understand past 7 days vs 60 days website traffic? Incorporate a Google Analytics report view? – See Web Analytics Link.
- Start-Up Business, (not only for just corporates) surely if you have started a new business and want to know how your income / cost is looking daily, and then maybe add a Dax function to understand your daily different of Income Vs Cost? Therefore would probably be a really good indication of what your income, cost and customer drivers are or are not?
So, compared to previous dashboards I’ve made this specific Dashboard I seriously love. Sometime developing applications within Power BI can be overly complicated fairly fast. My whole philosophy on creating Power BI is the 8 seconds rule!
- 4 seconds to crab their attention with colour scheme / does it look beautiful and simple
- 4 seconds: the human brain is wired in a certain way, if someone likes the look of something they are more likely going to dive deeper into your application. Hence why the look is so important.
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1 more thing…… Power BI is just amazing let’s face it!
Blog 09: Management Insights
Blog 08: Performance Analytics
Finally feel happy I can now share my performance analytics i’ve been doing on this application. As the fameous quote by Steve Jobs I live by. “Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish”!
Blog 07: Profit and Loss Reporting – my best application to date!!
Blog 06: Order (High Level Metrics with DAX)
Blog 05: Order / Cumulative Sales on DAX (Visual on below link)
Blog 04: Sales Analysis (Visual on below link)
Sheet 1 – Matrix Data Grid to show data in a granular way, by First Name of Sales Rep
Sheet 2 – High Level metrics to show all Cost / Profit and Sales in 1 single bar char to show more trend analysis better for the audience to see, as it shows comparisions.
Hope you guys enjoy! 🙂
Blog 03: Product Comparision Analysis Power BI (Visual on below link)
Blog 02: Transactional Sales Analysis in Power BI (Visual on below link)
Sheet 1 – High Level Analysis
Sheet 2 – Granular Analysis on Payment Types on Transactions
(Using a bit of DAX functions)
Blog 01:
Power BI – Regional Sales Analysis
Shrikesh Pattni 