Global Pharmaceutical company engages in advanced Power BI training

A global pharmaceutical company requested a Power BI – Beyond the Basics training course for their employees who want to improve their proficiency and utility with the business tool.

Power BI is a business analytics product that is used by companies to visualise the large volume of data, share insights within the organisation and then ultimately come to business decisions. The client stipulated that one of the main reasons to take the course was to improve employee’s ability using DAX (Data analysis expressions), which is similar to excel formulas but far more powerful. The client needed employees to be able to use DAX to select, filter and join data to generate columns, measures and tables. By learning DAX, the pharmaceutical company hoped that employees would be able to speed up their dashboards because smarter calculated columns and measures will reduce the amount of data it must find and visualise.

The pharmaceutical company discussed with JBI whether it would be beneficial to send the employees on an intensive, specific DAX training course that JBI runs. However, the company also wanted employees to learn about M language. This is similar to DAX in so much as it can be used to filter, manage and visualise data but M language is a query formula language and is used in the query editor to process data, whereas DAX will analyse it. Furthermore, the company wants to move away from one dimensional storytelling, enhance the visualisation experience of the employees and also introduce Power BI administration.

In the end a 3 day training course was agreed upon, which was tailored to the pharmaceutical world talking to the company through advantages of the product and also utilised data from the company in labs to add extra value to the course. The course outline that was finalised consisted of:

• Maximising DAX to create and complete complex calculations by utilising variables
• Discussing various pitfalls in the usage of DAX
• Developing a working understanding of advanced visualisation features, including different uses of bookmarks, implementing templates and synchronising filters
• Learning about Power query and M language to enhance data processing
• Understanding Power BI administration to control gateways and secure reports using apps

JBI ran the training course virtually via zoom for approximately 10 delegates and received a glowing reaction to the content and also the instructor.

“I liked that it was interactive as it allowed me to actually learn and apply the skills that I had learnt, especially for the DAX section, which will make using far simpler now. The teacher was also very helpful whenever I or individuals had a question.” UB, Data analyst

“Instructor is really nice has a deep understanding of the topic and really goes above and beyond to help his student. I will start to use more M language to manage my work load.” BS, Associate

Here is a short video from the Power BI - Beyond the Basics training course

Creating a Percentage of Total by Year using DAX - part of our  Microsoft Power BI Beyond the Basics training course

For further information on Power BI courses:

Power BI Introduction training course

Power BI - Beyond the Basics training course

Power BI - DAX training course

Power BI training course

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