UPCOMING EVENTS
Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW) Data Analytics Community - What is Microsoft Fabric and why should I care?
February 1st 2024 3:00pm-4:00pm (GMT)
Microsoft Fabric: what is it and why should you care? (icaew.com)
The ICAEW boasts over 150,000 Chartered Accountants globally as members, including over 30,000 in its thriving Data Analytics community. On 1st Feb 2024, Rishi is presenting to this community on Microsoft Fabric.
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Power BI is now part of a broader platform called Microsoft Fabric. But what exactly is MS Fabric, and why should you care? In this webinar, Rishi Sapra, a Chartered Accountant turned Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP), will show how you can use this new platform to perform Enterprise level data shaping/cleaning, modelling, and visualisation all from within the same Power BI (and Excel!) environment that you’re already used to.
Whether you’re proficient with using languages such as SQL or Python for data analytics, or you prefer the low code options of Power Query and Excel Pivot tables, Rishi will show how in either scenario you can leverage the power of the “lakehouse” in Microsoft Fabric. This data in OneLake can be the single, governed copy of your finance data across the Enterprise that is ready to be queried and analysed by co-pilot.
By the end of this webinar, you will understand how this allows the finance team to become “IT enabled rather than IT reliant”. This is achieved by being able to self-serve on not just the visualization layer but on the full end-to-end spectrum of Enterprise data analytics.
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Key Benefits of attending:
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Gain an understanding of the seven key product experiences in MS Fabric - Data Factory, SQL Data Warehouse, Data Science, Data Engineering, Real Time Analytics, Data Activator and Power BI - and how they all work together.
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Explore how all of these tools work with the same copy of the data, eliminating the need for data movement and working across different environments.
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Identify the skills you need in the finance team to leverage the capabilities of Microsoft Fabric (including generative AI!).
SQL Bits 2024 - Power BI and Fabric Governance – Going from the skies to the ground! (100 Minute session)
March 20th 2024 11:10-13:00
https://sqlbits.com/attend/the-agenda/wednesday/
Running since 2007 and now with over 3,000 attendees, SQL Bits has become the largest Data Platform conference in the world, running annually and featuring 200 world class speakers, 300+ hours of content, and the best networking opportunities in the industry. It features the world's best experts in the Microsoft data space presenting and attending from across the world.
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Rishi is presenting one of the new 100 minute sessions. In this session you will obtain a view of how to Govern and manage a large-scale Fabric/Power BI estate, specifically:
• Defining objectives for Governance, based on the Power BI adoption roadmap and data mesh/Modern Analytics Governance At Scale (MAGS) principles.
• Considering the scope of workspaces and artefacts in your tenant, and how to actively manage/monitor this using admin insights/REST APIs to capture inventory and activity logs.
• Review of tenant admin settings – how you decide what these should be (aligned to a set of corporate security principles/requirements) and how you can manage the groups of individuals who have access to particular settings/functionality through an approval-based workflow.
• Understanding the components and management of a “Managed workspace” architecture (where your Enterprise BI/Data artefacts are hosted, typically on Power BI Premium per Capacity) including AAD group-based access-control, Application Lifecycle Management, centralised data management (e.g. Dataflows/Datamarts/Shared Datasets) and performance management.
• Roles and Responsibilities of teams/individuals across the organisation, including a Centre of Excellence (focused on enablement) and developer teams.
• How to set up ongoing monitoring and support for Power BI/Fabric, including development of an Estate monitoring solution, using the Premium Capacity Metrics app and enabling your support/COE teams to effectively deal with issues.
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SQL Bits 2024 - What does Microsoft Fabric mean for a Finance/Business Analyst? (50 minute session, Free community day)
March 23rd 2024 10:10-11:00
https://sqlbits.com/attend/the-agenda/saturday/#What_does_Microsoft_Fabric_mean_for_a_Finance_Business_Analyst
Running since 2007 and now with over 3,000 attendees, SQL Bits has become the largest Data Platform conference in the world, running annually and featuring 200 world class speakers, 300+ hours of content, and the best networking opportunities in the industry. It features the world's best experts in the Microsoft data space presenting and attending from across the world.
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Rishi is presenting a session on what Microsoft Fabric means for a Finance/BI Analyst.
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We will start with looking at how financial reporting has evolved over time towards being more self-service driven with Power BI, and some of the challenges this presents when not supported by a cloud data platform. (Transactional finance data in particular needs a lot of work to be used for analytical purposes and this needs to be done in an auditable, scalable and performant manner!).
With the need for a data platform established, we will look at how Microsoft Fabric brings much of this capability back into the hands of technically minded finance staff who are now able to self-serve on the entire analytics process. We will explore the concepts of lakehouses and OneLake being the single location for all finance data (rather than much of it being kept in local Excel files!) and consider the benefits of all analytical workloads being able to utilise this data without having to duplicate it.
Finally we will look at how Fabric needs to be implemented across the Finance and IT functions in order to reap its benefits. This includes getting the right operating model (based on data mesh or CoE models) and considering the needs and skillsets of different individuals who work with data (e.g Data Explorers, Data Analysts, Data Engineers and Analytics Engineers!).
Financial Reporting With Power BI cohort-based course (Power Platform Finance)
Based on the full day training day delivered at SQL Bits 2023, This course consists of live instructor led training (run by Rishi), combined with self-paced e-learning which includes interactive “practice the clicks” exercises, downloadable Word/Excel templates and gamified quizzes.
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Through this course you will learn the following skills:
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Financial Analysis: Analyse Financial Statements and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to identify trends, patterns and areas for improvement.
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Storytelling with Data: Deliver actionable insights through data visualisations and providing sufficient context to allow your audience to evaluate performance.
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Operational Excellence: Ensure that your solutions are mantainable and performant by automating updates with new data and limiting technical debt.
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Data Governance and Security: Implement technical controls in Power BI to ensure the appropriate level of access control with continuous monitoring and alterting!
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Technical Skills: Everything from data cleaning and transforming – e.g. removing duplicates, handling missing values, and checking data quality – as well as data modelling, DAX and visualisation.
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Sign up to take the first two modules for free at www.powerplatformfinance.com. Given the limit on the number of participants in each cohort (necessary in order to maximise the learning experience), participants who have completed the free modules will be encouraged to apply for the full course by answering some short questions as part of the feedback process.