In Episode 32 of the Data Modernization Minute, Wayne talks about the “back end of data” and how it can be used. He explains the Microsoft Power BI Suite, which was recently adopted by the Walmart financial team.
Highlights
01:05 — When Microsoft introduced its Power BI Suite a few years ago, it was “essentially giving away a free version called Desktop, bundling a more capable version into the E5 license . . . and then selling even the biggest version for only a few dollars.”
01:56 — The reporting tools and BI tools were “pricey products with tremendous capabilities and an awesomely complex learning curve.” Microsoft launched its Power BI Suite as an initially free starter kit and then moved it up to a few dollars a month. Walmart has now adopted the Microsoft Power BI Suite as its primary finance tool for doing journal-level data analytics. Wayne says that the journal “is what gets booked before the ledger entries are made.”
02:22 — Walmart, the world’s largest retailer, has $570 billion in sales so far in 2022 and sees 230 million visits in-store every week. For its hundreds of billions of transactions, Walmart is using Microsoft Power BI, a tool that has previously been dismissed by many people, says Wayne.
03:37 — Wayne has used this tool since it was introduced and finds it to be terrific. Now Walmart, a massive organization, has adopted Microsoft Power BI. Wayne says this is a win for a low-end SaaS tool that is democratizing data access for the world’s biggest retailer.
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