K2's Business Intelligence, Featuring Microsoft's Power BI Tools

Overview

Business Intelligence (BI) is perhaps the hottest topic in most professional circles in today's business climate. Increasingly, organizations of all sizes seek to take advantage of the data available to them to identify previously undiscovered insights and gain competitive advantages thought to be out of reach just a few short years ago. A growing array of tools - from Excel add-ins to dedicated solutions such as Power BI - now allow you to leverage your existing knowledge and skills to create powerful, interactive dashboards and analyses unthinkable until recently. This program will teach you to implement "do-it-yourself business intelligence" using various techniques and tools. First, you will learn to use advanced Excel data query and summarization features to create Excel-based dashboards. You will then learn how to leverage that knowledge to build even more powerful BI objects using Microsoft's Power BI tools. If gaining better insights into your data to make better decisions interests you, then join us for a fast-paced look at how you can take advantage of these fantastic tools.

This course qualifies for reimbursement through the state’s Workforce Training Express Fund. As of April 7, 2025, the state’s Workforce Training Express Fund suspended reimbursements for training costs to Massachusetts businesses. While we don’t have a confirmed timeline for the program to resume, it will likely be sometime this summer. We will continue to monitor this closely and encourage you to visit the state’s Workforce Training website for the most current updates and guidance.

This course qualifies for reimbursement through the state’s Workforce Training Express Fund. Firms/companies with fewer than 50 staff can be reimbursed up to 100% of the cost of training and firms/companies with 50-100 employees can be reimbursed up to 50% of the cost of training. You must register for the course and apply for reimbursement through the Workforce Training Express Fund website a minimum of three weeks prior to the start of the course to be eligible. The course code for this program is C-4541. To learn more, click here or contact Julia Ekelund at jekelund@masscpas.org.

Highlights

• The importance of Business Intelligence in today's business climate
• Differentiating between Power BI licensing options
• A hands-on approach to creating effective Power BI reports and dashboards

Prerequisites

Basic understanding of computer operations and terminology, including Microsoft Office Excel 2019 and newer

Designed For

Business professionals seeking to develop and implement BI solutions

Objectives

• Create Excel-based BI dashboards
• List the potential shortcomings of BI solutions based wholly on Excel
• Identify and implement various Excel add-ins that might be helpful in BI applications
• Differentiate between the BI opportunities in Excel and Power BI
• Create and distribute dashboards using Power BI

Preparation

None