Augmented analytics is a powerful approach that leverages machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the analytics capabilities of business intelligence tools like Power BI. By automating data preparation, analysis, and visualization, augmented analytics empowers users to gain deeper insights from their data without requiring advanced data science skills. Here’s how you can use augmented analytics in Power BI to empower insights:
1. Data Preparation:
Data Profiling:
Power BI can automatically profile your data to identify data quality issues, outliers, and anomalies. This helps you understand your data’s health and take corrective actions.
2. Automated Data Insights:
Smart Insights:
Power BI offers a feature called “Smart Insights” that automatically generates insights from your data. It identifies trends, outliers, and anomalies, making it easier for users to spot critical information.
3. Natural Language Processing (NLP):
Q&A Natural Language Query:
Power BI’s Q&A feature allows users to ask questions in natural language and get instant answers in the form of charts and visuals. It utilizes NLP and machine learning to interpret user queries and generate meaningful responses.
4. AutoML (Automated Machine Learning):
Power BI integrates with AutoML platforms like Azure Machine Learning. You can use AutoML to build predictive models, such as forecasting future sales or predicting customer churn, without deep knowledge of machine learning algorithms.
5. Data Insights with AI Visuals:
Power BI provides AI-powered visuals like decomposition trees, key influencers, and scatter plot matrices. These visuals help users explore data relationships and gain insights more easily.
6. Anomaly Detection:
Use built-in AI capabilities to automatically detect anomalies in your data, such as unusual spikes in website traffic or unexpected changes in sales patterns.
7. Auto-Suggest:
Power BI can suggest relevant visualizations and insights based on the data you have selected. This feature assists users in choosing the most appropriate visualizations for their data.
8. Integration with Cognitive Services:
Power BI can be integrated with Microsoft’s Cognitive Services, allowing you to perform sentiment analysis, image recognition, and language translation on your data for deeper insights.
9. Explainable AI:
Power BI allows you to explore AI models and understand how they arrive at predictions or insights. This transparency is crucial for building trust in AI-driven analytics.
10. Collaboration and Sharing:
Share augmented analytics insights with your team or stakeholders through Power BI dashboards and reports, enabling data-driven decision-making across your organization.
Challenges of augmented analytics tools:
Integral to many enterprise BI and BA solutions, augmented analytics tools take advantage of AI technologies while respecting human intelligence.
Potential challenges include the following:
Misconceptions of AI:
Some employees might fear that AI technologies will replace them. Communicate openly and help them understand that AI has limitations. Augmented analytics relies on human initiative and domain expertise to deliver value.
Poor data literacy:
Hold workshops and provide mentors to help business teams approach analytics with confidence. Teach users key data concepts and phrases and how to think about data in ways that help their team and business. Highlight successful augmented analytics projects.
Ineffective data and model management:
Train ML models using comprehensive, current data that’s free of errors and bias, and regularly update algorithms to handle evolving data assets. With high-quality data and robust models, your users will trust the tools to help them generate timely, accurate insights.
Irrelevant results:
Show users how to generate information that’s meaningful to their roles and responsibilities. Otherwise, they will grow frustrated and waste time filtering out irrelevant results.
Insufficient computing power and scalability:
Depending on your IT capabilities, an increase in information volumes and processing requirements could affect response times.
To get started with augmented analytics in Power BI, you’ll need to have access to relevant data sources, define your business goals, and explore the various features and integrations that Power BI offers for augmented analytics. Additionally, staying updated with the latest Power BI releases and AI advancements will help you leverage the full potential of augmented analytics for empowering insights in your organization.
