It's quite difficult to introduce a new product if it is not part of MS Office.
This screen shows, in the top left, the number of insurance policies by cover type (Comprehensive, TPFT or TPO) and then for each cover type who is allowed to drive (Policy Holder Only, Any Driver etc,).
No pre-preparation of the data was needed to be able do this, if you have never used a BI product before then this may not seem important. However is it one of the main differentiators between PerBI and other BI products.
Again this screen shows the number of insurance polices by cover type (Comprehensive, TPFT or TPO) this time at the bottom and who can drive. But this time the other two screens are both for comprenhsive cover but for vehicles which are garaged and which are not.
This example may seem a bit obscure after all who would want to know this? But I have picked it to demonstrate the point that if you want to get the answer you can.
In this case you might want to pick the policy holders with comp cover who park on the road to do a mailshot offering a security device for which you would earn a commission.
This is the point of a business intelligence product, to find areas of your business that are of interest not to find things that you already instinctively know.
Where It Fits In The Market
PerBI was designed to fill a perceived gap between Excel Pivot Tables and full blown Business Intelligence products like SQL Server Analysis Services or Cognos PowerPlay.
The objective of PerBI is to be as easy to use as a spreadsheet, just load a file and get results, but be able to handle much more data.
Even now Excel has a limit of 1 million rows and it doesn't seem very comfortable with that much data.
The specialised business intelligence products can handle more data than PerBI but generally require a lot of setting up. This can be outside the capabilities of many organisations that don't have an IT department.
It is often the case that existing administration systems are great for administration but are weak when it comes to examining your data when you are not sure what you want to know.
PerBI lets you "play" around with your data in an easy to use way, whether you are looking for sales opportunities or analysing that part of the business that you do not intuitively know about.
How does it work with my data?
On a regular basis the "techie" that looks after your computer system unloads the relevant information from your administration system as a text file (CSV) to your PC. PerBI works with this copied data, it does not directly interact with your live system.
Where there are no specific export facilities within the admin system, data can often be extracted using the admin system's report writer or letter writer to create "letters" with the relevant information.
Download And Purchasing
Business Friendly Licencing, On A Concurrent Usage Basis.
The PerBI software is copyrighted and is offered on an As Is basis with no warranty as to suitability, reliability or fitness for purpose and on the basis that the author will not be liable for any losses or damages. These terms are the only ones that grant permission to use the software.
The software is copyrighted but may be downloaded and used without the payment of any fee for a period of around 14 days.
The licence is based on the number of concurrent users and this is based on trust with no enforcement measures in the software.
I know that this is an odd arrangement, but I am also a user of software and have seen things that I love but would only use once a month along with other people who would also only use it once per month.
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