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May 12, 2017

Still Using 1995 Internet Technologies

The internet has changed over the years, but people remain the same. See what’s different, what’s similar and how the past can define the future.

AOL

There’s a famous clip from The Today Show in 1994 where the hosts try to figure out what the internet is. Millennials watch it and giggle as the stars puzzle over seemingly simple concepts like email and web pages. The hosts weren’t silly or stupid, they were only trying to come to terms with a disruptive technology that has since taken over practically everything we do. There are articles from experts in subsequent years that promise the internet would die off soon, much like Hula Hoops or flagpole sitting. We’ll look back at the results of a survey from the early days, and what the average person was doing when they used their precious phone line to connect.

Email

The Pew Research Center took a survey in late 1995 about how Americans were making use of the internet. People check their email on average 15 times a day in 2017, and some are always getting alerts as to every new piece of mail that pops into their inbox. But back in 1995, 29% of more than 4,000 people testified that they only checked their email once a day. On average, they sent three emails a day and received only about five.

CD-Roms Vs. Internet

If Americans had to choose between CD-ROMs at the time and the internet, it seems that people would choose CD-ROMs. Around half the people surveyed had CD-ROMs, and attitudes and usage patterns suggest that the web just wasn’t cutting it for them yet.

Adult Entertainment

Most people wanted to eliminate any type of adult entertainment from the internet entirely, though the margins were somewhat slim with a 52 to 41% vote for banning it. At the time, censorship seemed perfectly reasonable, much like the movies or television.

Websites

Only 1 in every 5 users had ever signed onto the web, even though the first website was already 5 years old. Survey participants appreciated connecting with strangers via chat and skipping postage costs via email, but the days of idle surfing weren’t quite here yet.

Privacy Concerns

The concerns over privacy have waned and waxed over the years, but it’s not a new concept. Half of the users admitted to worrying about someone invading their privacy in 1995. While that concern would filter out some in 2008 and 2009, it was revived again after Edward Snowden laid out the brutal truths he’d encountered in national security. Americans are more concerned about their privacy regarding businesses and government than they ever were before.

Understanding the past is a good way to keep us moving forward — until the time another generation can ask questions that will seem obvious to the generation that follows.

{company} is the trusted choice when it comes to staying ahead of the latest developments and can provide you with tips, tricks and news. Contact us at {phone} or send us an email at {email} for more information.

May 12, 2017
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Wisdom-Wednesday-Google-Search
May 10, 2017

Wisdom Wednesday: 4 Features to Send Your Business Website to the Top of Google’s Rankings

Because Google always changes the algorithm that it uses to determine search engine rankings, your business’ website needs to stay on top of the current key features that can help move it to the top of Google’s search results.

Google Search Rankings

Many companies approach search engine optimization as a one-time challenge; once you have set up your company’s website with an eye to maximizing your Google search ranking, they think, you’re all set. In actuality, Google regularly makes changes to its algorithm that determines its search engine rankings. Keeping your business’ website at the top of Google’s search results requires constant attention to the changes in Google’s ranking factors and continuous tweaking of your site’s content. With that in mind, here are the four key features to utilize right now to improve your business’ Google search ranking.

HTTPS

Google first announced that HTTPS would be used as a factor in its ranking system back in 2014. MozCast, an online platform dedicated to tracking the changes in Google’s algorithm, has found that Google is keeping that promise; almost 46 percent of all of Google’s top ranking websites are HTTPS sites. Google has made this push based on their belief in the need for strong Internet security. Especially if your business offers any form of online shopping or information gathering features, moving to HTTPS is critical.

Google AdWords

While pay-per-click services like Google AdWords have not traditionally been a part of search engine optimization, MozCast has found a direct relationship between the two. Almost 53 percent of websites that appear on the first page of Google’s search results feature Google AdWords on the top of their pages. In short, paying for Google AdWords yourself won’t raise your search ranking, but becoming a part of Google’s advertising network and having ads embedded on your web page might.

Reviews

Google is upfront about the fact that it utilizes customer reviews in determining website rankings, so it should come as no surprise that almost 37 percent of businesses that reach Google’s first page of search results feature customer reviews. Indeed, Google itself now displays customer ratings right below text ads in order to connect customers with quality businesses.

Knowledge Panels

As MozCast has noted, approximately 38 percent of Google’s highest ranking websites have Knowledge Panels. Knowledge Panels appear as information boxes to the right of Google’s search results and are intended to help potential customers quickly find contact and other information for businesses. Unfortunately, you cannot directly put your business in a Knowledge Panel; Google itself makes the determination based on your company’s relevance to a potential customer’s search. However, you can influence the chance that your business will be included in a Knowledge Panel by increasing your business’ general prominence and local search engine optimization.

Concerned that you’re not doing everything that you need to help get your business to the top of Google’s rankings? Contact us today at {phone} or {email} and we can introduce you to an expert from within our community of specialists.

May 10, 2017
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April 2017 Calendar. Isolated on White Background. 3D Illustration
May 8, 2017

What Business Professionals Need To Know About April’s Microsoft Office Update

Microsoft’s April releases include new apps and updates to old favorites

April Microsoft Office 365

Several major updates to Office 365 were published in April. The worldwide rollout of Outlook Customer Manager and the introduction of Microsoft To-Do are particularly good news.

Outlook Customer Manager

Outlook Customer Manager was first introduced in November to Office 365 customers who take part in the early release program. Now it’s available to everyone who has a premium subscription. This nifty tool brings CRM (customer relationship management) to Office 365.

With Outlook Customer Manager, all of your customer interactions and information are tracked and organized in a timeline that’s visible beside your inbox. The information, which includes emails, calls, notes, meetings, tasks, deals, and deadlines, is automatically collected from your Office 365 environment. You can also use associate tasks with a contact, and receive timely reminders of upcoming events and deadlines.

Some of the best features include:

  • When an email arrives, it’s scanned by Outlook Customer Manager; if it contains a request for a meeting, file, or information, a reminder is automatically created on your Today page.
  • You have the option to share customer information across teams; that way every team member who interacts with a customer can get the full picture of the relationship.
  • Customer information can be auto-filled from Bing. When you’re setting up a new company, Outlook Customer Manager will suggest company information based on Bing information, which you can accept to auto-fill fields like address and website URL.
  • You can use Cortana, Microsoft’s personal digital assistant, to manage setting up meetings with customers, taking this often time-consuming task off your hands.

There’s also a handy mobile app that provides access to the same information available on your desktop. It’s only available for iOS so far, but apps for additional platforms are in the works.

Outlook Customer Manager is integrated into Outlook and is accessible from the home tab in your Outlook inbox.

Microsoft To-Do

Just released in preview, Microsoft To-Do is an intelligent task management app that brings the satisfaction of checking things off your to-do list to your desktop and pocket. It can be accessed on Windows 10 devices, the web, and iPhone and Android.

Every day starts with a fresh, blank “My Day” list. You can add items yourself or let Microsoft To-Do give you suggestions it gleans by looking at all of your to-dos and prioritizing the most important ones. As you complete items, just click to check them off your list. To make this even more helpful, you can add reminders, due dates, and notes to to-do items.

In addition to the daily “My Day” list, you can create as many separate lists as you’d like – for work, travel, school, groceries, etc. You can personalize each list with its own colors and theme to help you quickly identify each one.

Microsoft To-Do syncs across multiple devices, so your mobile phone, desktop, and tablet all display the most current information. Plus, it’s free – so why not give it a try?

Other April Updates

As part of its April updates, Microsoft also tweaked some of its other offerings:

  • The PowerPoint Designer now works on iPads. It was already available on Windows desktops, Macs, and other tablets, but now iPad users can take advantage of it too.
  • Office 365 support for groups has been expanded. Now you can more easily access documents in your frequently used groups from within Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.
  • Skype for Windows 10 is fully released. The newest version, called Windows 10 Creators Update, is packed with new features like mini view and integration of a new app, Paint 3D, which allows you to create or modify 3D objects and transform 2D objects into 3D.

Along with these new apps and features, Microsoft released several security and compliance updates geared toward enterprise subscribers. Office 365 Threat Intelligence is now generally available, and Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) can be used to protect users from malicious links in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents.

Outlook Customer Manager and Microsoft To-Do are the best news in this batch of updates. These apps are welcome additions to the Microsoft digital toolbox. Kudos to Microsoft for keeping the new products coming.

May 8, 2017
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May 5, 2017

20 Years of Viruses, Bugs and Computer Scams

20 years of viruses

There are viruses that can be implanted on a computer in 2017, and lie in wait until a network becomes vulnerable before attacking. Unfortunately, viruses have come a long way from 20 years ago. The term virus was coined early on in computer history, but it’s every bit as relevant today as it was then. Just like biological viruses adapt to Purell and antibiotics, so too have viruses learned to adapt to new security measures.

Brain in 1986

Brain was the first reported computer virus on DOS, and was announced in January of 1986. It spread via floppy disk, and spawned generations of hackers with its ability to move from computer to computer. Brain appeared to be little more than a prank (courtesy of two developers in Pakistan), a joke in which the hackers actually revealed their real location in the text of the virus. Because the virus did little to harm people’s data or machines, it often went entirely unnoticed by users.

The Evolution

Today we refer to viruses as a specific kind of malware, one that can self-replicate and continue its destructive path indefinitely. While Brain may be one of the famous early viruses because it came about when computers were experiencing more ubiquity, self-replicating programs date back to the 1940s. Programs in the early days might slow down processing time, taunt users with cryptic messages, or severely impact performance. Once Brain was no longer a news items, new forms started to pop up. The ones that followed famously infected files from Yale University, destroyed files in Jerusalem, and exploited computers that were known to have buffering vulnerabilities. Viruses could be the product of hackers, or sometimes of legitimate company’s software.

Viruses Today

Viruses have gotten faster and more efficient to make them a force to be feared. They can delete photos, files and entire storage libraries. They’re developed to target Word, Outlook, Windows OS, Mac OS — nothing is safe. They can be designed to affect Facebook or Twitter users, or programmed to steal credit card information straight for the source. Hackers may be out for pure destruction or chaos, or potentially for ransom. The more the average person understands them, the faster hackers create new tricks to get in. Viruses can come in the form of a pop up, an email from a coworker, or a completely undetectable program that waits until the time is right.

Protection for Everyone

The physical world will never provide total safety, and the same holds true for the virtual world. But there are preventative measures you can take to safeguard your company from viruses that go beyond anti-malware and perimeter protections. Security needs to have layers to fend off the intelligent viruses of 2017.

{company} is the trusted choice when it comes to staying ahead of the latest virus developments and can provide you with tips, tricks and news. Contact us at {phone} or send us an email at {email} for more information.

Used by permission

May 5, 2017
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Password-Day-2017
May 4, 2017

May the Fourth Be With You on Password Day!

Become a force to be reckoned with this May the Fourth with a strong password that works behind the scenes of your accounts.

Password Day 2017

May the fourth is quickly approaching. This exciting day marks a time when the world’s attention turns to celebrating an iconic movie series that has generated a following spanning more than 30 years. On May 4th, the world will celebrate Star Wars Day in a variety of ways. These include dressing up as their favorite character, creating tasty treats that depict iconic scenes, binge watching the series and numerous other creative ways of paying homage to the Star Wars movie franchise. People of all ages, and who live all over the world, will do their best to live up to the Star Wars Day slogan of “May the Fourth Be With You!”

There’s Another Reason to Celebrate That Day, Too

Star Wars Day is not the only important event that is happening on May 4th, though. That day has been designated as World Password Day 2017. It marks the day that you can join thousands of people and organizations across the globe as they take a pledge on social media to make improvements to their password habits. Industry giants like Intel, Dell, Lenovo, TeleSign, BBB and more, are supporting World Password Day and propelling people to embrace its initiatives.

Active Internet Security Involves More Than Just Passwords

These days, maintaining your security online is vital to protecting everything that is important to you. Whether it’s your social media accounts, email or bank account, ensuring that your information is secure and private is vital to protecting everything from your job and your money to your reputation and your relationships. Unlike in the past, though, a strong password is only the starting point in staying secure online.

Step One: Create a Strong Password

After you create a strong password — or even a passphrase as suggested by the Password Day website — you’ll need to move on to the other three steps to fully secure your online existence.

Step Two: Create Different Passwords

It’s important that you create a different password for every site you visit. A useful analogy to help you realize the dangers that exist if you use the same password everywhere you visit online is the damage that can be done to your life if it took only one key to open your front door, your safe, your bank and your car. The criminals who steal passwords use them to get into websites of all types — often with a large success because people use the same password in multiple places.

Step Three: Find a Password Manager

To facilitate quick access to your sites, you need a good password manager that stores all your passwords safely and securely. A master password is required for you to access your password manager. Because the master password is only recognized from a registered device, it’s hard for for someone to log on from an unknown device.

Step Four: Add Multi-Factor Authentication

Chances are, you’ve already been using — or at least been exposed to — multi-factor authentication without knowing its fancy name. Using a fingerprint reader to unlock your phone and having a secret code texted to you before you could access account information for an account whose password you’d forgotten are just a couple of ways that your true identity is verified to protect your information.

When combined, these four steps help you build a more secure online presence. This World Password Day, adopt measures to put the force of a strong password behind you so you can surf the web knowing that your accounts and their information won’t be compromised.

At {company}, we provide our readers with the latest tech information they need to stay secure. For more tips on security, call us at {phone} or {email} us today.

May 4, 2017
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The Worst Password Mistakes that Compromise Security

Broadcasting your password on national television may be the easiest way to invite hackers, but common password mistakes make it almost as easy for your data security to be compromised.

Password safety may not be one of the most interesting topics in the realm of cybersecurity, but having a strong password is one of the easiest ways to protect your business’ data integrity. The importance of a robust password has been emphasized by many experts, yet often users who think that they are utilizing a secure password are actually opening themselves up to attacks. You may not be broadcasting your password on national television, but if your password falls into one of the following categories, you could be just as vulnerable to hackers.

Passwords

Short and Simple

Short, simple passwords may be easy to remember, but they are also easy to guess. In general, the longer a password is, the harder it is for hackers to break it. Each additional character that you add to your password increases the possible combination of letters, numbers and symbols exponentially. Remember that hackers tend to go after low-hanging fruit, so any steps that you take to make your password harder to crack increases the likelihood that someone trying to break in will move on to the next target instead.

Lacking in Numbers or Symbols

Letters-only passwords may be more intuitive for you–but they are for hackers as well. Just as adding additional characters to your password exponentially increases the number of the possible combinations, so does using numbers and symbols in addition to letters. Just think about it: using letters, symbols and numbers means that each character in your password has almost twice as many options as if you only use letters.

Based on Personal Information

As highlighted in the clip from Jimmy Kimmel Live, using personal information such as a pet’s name or a birthday is incredibly common. Including personal details in your password, however, makes you very vulnerable to hacking. You may think that “Fido111379” is secure and difficult to guess, but blog posts discussing your dog or Facebook comments wishing you a happy birthday can broadcast your personal details to anyone who cares enough to look for them.

Simplistic Patterns

Being able to remember your password is, of course, necessary and utilizing a pattern might seem to be an easy solution to commit it to memory. Complex patterns that use letters, numbers and symbols within a long password are not a security risk. However, most people who use patterns in their password rely on overly simplistic ones, and this makes you vulnerable to hackers, particularly if your password is short. One particular type of pattern that you must avoid is keyboard-based patterns, such as “123qwe” or “1qaz2wsx.”

Worried that your business’ data might be vulnerable to hackers? The experts at {city}’s {company} can help you evaluate your security procedures to see if you have any glaring holes. Contact us today at {phone} or {email} to learn more.

Used by permission

May 3, 2017
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Wisdom Wednesday: How to Avoid Computer System Infection

Criminals want your company’s financial data, customer lists including credit card information, intellectual property, and anything else they can sell.

Computer System Infection

Cyber crime is a huge endeavor with severe consequences for organizations that are victimized. Criminals want your company’s financial data, customer lists including credit card information, intellectual property, and anything else they can sell.

Besides the immediate impact on your business’ ability to operate (for example ransomware can shut you down), there are significant costs associated with a data breach. These costs include:

  • Potential fines from regulatory agencies for failure to protect personal identification data (PI) or personal financial information (for example a credit card number). Some fines have been in million dollar multiples.
  • The cost of notifying all persons and businesses that had their data breached.
  • Costs of providing credit monitoring and identity theft protection for all involved.
  • The potential cost of defending a class action lawsuit against your company for failure to adequately protect sensitive information.
  • Loss of customers
  • Loss of business reputation
  • Inability to attract new customers or clients

Following are Best Practices for securing your computer system and company data.

Best Practices for Computer System Protection

The following list is the Best Practices for keeping your business’ computer system, programs, and data, safe from prying eyes.

  1. Make sure your firewall is on so that intruders cannot access your system from the internet.
  2. Install security software and keep it updated.
  3. Filter all email for computer viruses.
  4. The more popular a program used by your business is, the more appealing it is a target for cyber criminals. Criminals know that many users do not regularly patch their programs against malware infections, so popular programs give them a wider pool for targeting. Make sure that your computer programs are updated as soon as a security patch is released.
  5. Exercise caution when using free 3rd party software claiming they check for software updates. Free software may be bundled with malicious software.
  6. Instruct employees that they should never open emails from unknown senders since they might be a source of infection to your company’s computer system. Attached malware might be anything from a virus to ransomware.
  7. Tell your employees they should check with senders they know if an email has a suspicious attachment. A phone call to the sender can help avoid the consequences of a data breach.
  8. Inform employees they should not open websites they are not familiar with and they should make sure the address bar is the site they want to visit. A random click could take them to a website that is just waiting to download malware onto your company computer system.
  9. Buy your software from a reputable buyer and never use pirated software as it may be infected with malware.
  10. Before using thumb drives and other portable media, scan them with security software to ensure they are virus free.

Computer security may surpass your company’s IT capabilities. Accordingly, consider a computer managed services provider with a strong background in computer security. For more information about managed services and how an MSP can help your company contact {company} in {city}. {phone} or contact us by {email}.

May 3, 2017
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Comparing Collaboration Tools: Microsoft Teams vs. Slack

Microsoft recently released Microsoft Teams, billing it as a direct competitor to Slack for organizations seeking a cost-effective collaboration tool. How do the two platforms compare?

Microsoft Teams

No matter the size of your team, and whether they work in the office or off-site, collaboration tools are a necessity for so many projects today. With G Suite, Redbooth, Slack, Trello, and more the possibilities seem endless when it comes to finding the right collaboration tools.

Slack channels in particularly have been a tremendously popular choice for communicating remotely. Organizations of all sizes have gravitated to Slack as it operates on a “freemium” model that allows users with smaller budgets to use its most basic functions while offering paying users of various calibers more choices. However, Microsoft is now trying to up the ante on Slack by rolling out Microsoft Teams.

In deciding which option is best for your team, here’s how Teams and Slack compare in the major areas of cost, features, UX design, and third-party integration.

Cost

Slack’s free mode is what made it so famous in the first place, giving users the option to upgrade if they need more features. Microsoft Teams does not offer a free basic version to try out which puts it out of reach for smaller organizations who want to give it a try without disrupting workflow. However, Teams is relatively easy to integrate if the organization is already a Microsoft user and not relying on a free office solution like Open Office.

Slack currently has about 4 million daily active users, with roughly 25% of them being paid members. It costs slightly more than Teams as pricing starts at approximately $6.67 per user while the former starts at $5 per user.

Features

Both Teams and Slack offer mention alerts as well as emojis threaded replies for easy reading. If you need to conduct a poll, Teams has a built-in tool while Slack requires a plug-in.

Video conferencing is made simple with both Teams and Slack. Teams offer built-in Skype integration within chat rooms while Slack’s video chat is built-in, but multi-video chat is only available to paying users.

Teams are also available in 18 languages while Slack is only in English.

UX Design and Navigation

Navigation is tabbed in both tools, but Teams has tabs for activity, chat, teams, meetings, and files which makes organizing multiple projects a little easier. Slack has tabs for teams, channels, direct messages, and private groups which can make managing multiple projects more confusing to navigate even if you’re a paying user.

For colors and themes, Teams offers only three of them while Slack has a very long list of different themes. Teams have a custom meme and sticker editor while Slack has meme bot integration.

Ultimately, Teams only allows members who are also registered with Teams to be added to yours while Slack will let anyone with an invitation join.

Security

While both tools support two-factor authentification, both also have a history of breaches/compromised accounts. Since Teams only allows users from inside the team, this may be considered an additional security precaution. Teams also have essential data leakage prevention while Slack does not.

Integration

Slack is integrated with Google Drive and over 750 other third party apps and tools, even Office 365 through Zapier. Teams are only combined with 150 apps but works seamlessly with other Office 365 products.

All in all, both Teams and Slack are robust collaboration solutions that offer cost-effective options and different features about your organization’s needs and your preferences. Slack may be a preferable option starting out if you have a very limited budget, with the option to upgrade if you need more features and team members. Teams offers superior security but haven’t been without breaches. It is also limited in that only users who are team members are allowed to collaborate on projects, making it ideal for organizations that have more established teams and projects with longer duration where turnover is less likely.

Slack ultimately offers the most integration with third-party apps, but if your team relies heavily on Office 365 products, Teams will be easiest to work with as it doesn’t need Zapier to integrate seamlessly.

May 1, 2017
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Wisdom Wednesday: The Importance of Training Your Employees to Spot Spoofed Emails

The number of security issues and malware risks that your company must contend with continues to grow every year, but one of the most potentially devastating threats that your business faces is surprisingly low-tech in nature. Spoofed emails don’t rely on complex ransomware or sophisticated keystroke loggers. Instead, your company’s bank account and sensitive information are at risk simply by your employees attempting to perform their job duties. Training your team to spot spoofed emails is key to avoiding falling victim to common scams.

CEO Fraud

What types of spoofed e-mail scams are out there?

Examples of two common types of spoofed email scams played out in recent weeks. The first, an instance of the CEO fraud, involved an Internet criminal passing himself off as the head of a small Kansas construction company. The fraudster pretended to be the CEO of Cornejo & Sons and emailed the finance department of Sedgwick County to request $566,000 in payment. Because the county actually owed the construction company money for services rendered, they submitted payment as directed–only to later find out that the payment request hadn’t come from Cornejo & Sons and the construction company never received any funds.

A similar scam aimed at a Wyoming hospital system sought to obtain employees’ W2 forms. In this case, the Internet fraudster posed as an internal executive at Campbell County Health and requested the W2 files for all staff from the hospital group’s finance department. The finance department complied, exposing the hospital’s 1,300 employees to potential tax return fraud.

Can you and your staff spot a spoofed e-mail?

No longer completely confident that your employees won’t fall victim to one of these commonly spoofed e-mail scams? Luckily, there are steps that you can take to train your staff to spot a spoofed e-mail. Conducting training sessions to alert your employees to the existence of such scams is an important first step. Putting in place internal practices to verify the veracity of any request before responding will also help your employees understand how to deal with any potential scam emails that your business receives.

However, some employees don’t understand the real threat that accompanies spoofed emails until they have actually been the recipient of a fake request. For this reason, some businesses choose to initiate a simulated attack to reveal to their employees firsthand how easy it is to become the victim of a spoofed email. Some services exist that make it easy to carry out a pretend to attack. Some of these services such as PhishMe allow you to target the attack to match the real threat each of your employees is likely to face, such as an email sent to marketing asking them to provide their SharePoint credentials. Experts assert that it is fundamental to follow any simulated attack with further training as your employees will be particularly receptive to in-depth lessons on avoiding spoofed emails after falling for your staged attack.

Concerned that your employees might be vulnerable to spoofed emails? The security experts at {company} can help you discover your business’ weak spots. Contact us today at {phone} or {email} to learn more.

Contact us today at {phone} or {email} to learn more.

April 26, 2017
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Data Visualization Tools: How BI Can Power Your Business

Microsoft released new custom data visualization tools for Power BI. Learn how your business can gain actionable insight with Power BI.

Data Visualization

Microsoft has done it again. In March they introduced a new product to their office store called Power BI custom visuals. If you haven’t seen it yet, these are a set of powerful visual tools that will help you create actionable insight from even the most incomprehensible data. These new tools are free to Power BI users.

The beauty of Microsoft is that they are determined to make their software accessible to even the smallest business. Traditional business analytics and intelligence tools used to be available to enterprise organizations that could afford the hefty upfront costs of on-premise installations.

But the cloud has been the great equalizer, allowing the small to mid-size business access to the same business analytics software as big industry players. Today you can download tools like Power BI custom visuals to add impact to your reports. Let’s look at the potential impact of the release of Power BI custom visuals on your business.

Customized Visualizations Add Business Intelligence

If you haven’t started using Power BI, you’re missing something special. BI stands for business intelligence – and that is exactly what this suite of products aims to provide. Power BI was designed by Microsoft to give you data analytics tools to change the way you make business decisions. Power BI launches from a customizable dashboard that gives you a 360-view of the metrics that are important to your business. Because this product is cloud-based, you’ll see a real-time snapshot of data.

You can access this dashboard from anywhere you have a digital connection. This feature-rich software allows you to not only capture and analyze relevant data, it allows the creation of custom reports that collate data from multiple disparate databases.

But it’s the power of how you visualize and present this data that is particularly important. In your business model, you probably have a variety of internal and external stakeholders that could benefit from the visual presentation of important metrics on company performance. All the data in the world will mean nothing if you don’t create and communicate insight from the patterns it produces. That’s the “intelligence” in BI – and Power BI custom visuals helps you discern meaning from the data and then apply it to your daily business decisions.

Here are some of our favorite examples of the custom visuals Power BI offers:

  • Correlation Plot can help you spot the interconnections between multiple data points. Instead of slicing and dicing multiple data points to figure out correlations, you can visually plot data and look for clues. Bubble charts are helpful in showing relationships between numerical values. This could be useful in spotting market trends across demographic segments.
  • SandDance was created to let users see both the forest – and the trees. It takes data and displays it as points on a map. You can take many individualized records and then organize them in groups to create insight. You can even display this data in 3-D. These are touch-based displays; you can drag and drop data at the touch of your fingers. It’s easy to use and visually very interesting, with smooth transitions between views to keep your presentation cohesive.
  • Word Cloud looks for frequent words in text or spreadsheets and turns them into a clever graphical image. With Word Cloud, you can forget tediously digging through big amounts of text to highlight the most frequently used words. This software does it for you, finding the themes behind the data. You can also change the appearance of the word cloud by making it larger or smaller, adding rotation, along with other fun features.

It’s important to note that Microsoft customers and the company itself created these tools. This goes to the heart of the open source movement; the source codes from these tools are available and able to be modified. This allows users to make changes to fit their business or simply to improve upon the product. This accessibility benefits everyone – including your business.

These tools can help your business in so many ways. You can:

  • Use data to tell your story
  • Build evidence-based cases or theories
  • Test ideas and hypotheses
  • Go beyond surface explanations to actually understand the “why” behind the data
  • Support purchase decisions
  • Spot customer or market trends
  • Look for correlations or causes
  • Carve out specific data subsets
  • Give broader context to data pockets
  • Create actionable insight

Contact {company} at {email} or {phone} to find out how businesses in {city} can benefit from Microsoft’s Power BI products.

April 25, 2017
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