In the modern data-driven world, some of the most attractive and lucrative professional opportunities lie in the area of business intelligence, data analysis, or visualization.
Pursuing such careers requires several critical skills. These include data modeling, advanced MS Excel knowledge, and Structured Query Language (SQL) among other certifications.
Microsoft’s Power BI is a powerful tool that helps you connect to and visualize data easily. This way, you can gain deeper data insight for drawing valuable insights and making data-driven business decisions.
However, you’ll need to learn the ins and outs of using Power BI. This is why you’ll need a certification course to help you get started in the high-growth field of data analytics.
We’ll look at seven of the best Power BI certification courses that you can take to learn job-ready, in-demand skills such as data analysis and processing to gain key business insights.
Why You Should Take a Power BI Certification Course
There are several reasons why you should consider taking a Power BI certification course. These include:
- Quick insights: With Power BI, you can get a quick start with quick yet powerful insights. You don’t have to have any training and the setup is pretty easy and uncomplicated with dashboards for top services like Google Analytics, Salesforce, and Microsoft Dynamics.
- Streamlined data publication and distribution: Power BI refreshes data each time an underlying dataset is updated so you don’t need to email large files or upload them to a shared drive.
- Real-time updates: The dashboards in Power BI update in real time giving you the ability to quickly solve any issues and identify opportunities faster.
- Customizability: Power BI’s app is easy to customize for better navigation. This way, you can find content quickly and easily figure out relationships between dashboards and reports. You can also customize security features and accessibility for different people in the organization.
- Integrations: Power BI works with Cortana, Microsoft’s digital assistant. This way, you can ask questions verbally in natural language and get access to graphs and charts, especially if you’re using a mobile device.
- Artificial Intelligence: As a Power BI user, you can access text analytics, image recognition, integrate it with Azure Machine Learning, and create machine learning models.
Best Power BI Certification Courses
Microsoft’s Power BI commands a significant share of the Business Intelligence software market, competing with the likes of Tableau, Sisense, and Qlikview among others.
To get hired in a Power BI position, there are certain skills that recruiters look for. The main skill and most basic that should be on your resume is advanced knowledge of MS Excel.
Other than that, you need to be aware of data modeling strategies, strong knowledge of DAX formulas (similar to Excel formulas), Power Query, SQL, and the ability to build interactive dashboards.
With such skills, you can easily get hired in industries like hospitality, finance, software or IT, management consulting, staffing and recruitment, and retail. You also get a wide range of potential careers to work in such as data scientist, product manager, or business analyst.
Ready to get started in data analytics with a professional certificate? Take any of these Power BI courses to kick-start your career in a fast-growing field.
Also Read: Power BI Alternatives For Mac
1. Fundamentals of Data Visualization with Power BI
Most, if not all fields these days require data. However, not everyone can gain the necessary skills to discover the right data that’s needed and use it in ways that add value to the business and to their work.
This fundamental Power BI certification course prepares learners to approach the data they have and ask the right questions to get the right answers from the data.
An integral step in this process, therefore, is to understand the data lifecycle, which helps you analyze, manipulate, and visualize data in any program.
You’ll be introduced to these steps using R, after which you’ll apply what you’ve learned using Power BI.
You’ll also be introduced to business-related exercises and data sets that will help you become confident in working with data, creating data visualizations, and preparing reports and dashboards in Power BI.
The self-paced certification course takes two months to complete and features two skill-building courses that teach you how to analyze, manage, and communicate in R. This way, you can be a critical producer and consumer of data visualizations.
You’ll also learn how to market your data skills to employers, identify and work with business-oriented datasets, and create and share fully functional reports in Power BI.
Some of the lessons you’ll get in this Power BI certification course include:
- Analyzing and visualizing data: This takes four weeks with 10-20 hours per week to help you step up your analytics game
- Essentials of data literacy: This takes four weeks with 5-10 hours per week so you can learn how to read, work with, and analyze data
Your course instructors are Pete Benbow, team lead for Analytics and Business Intelligence, and Che Smith, Senior Analytics Engineer at Netflix and visiting Assistant Professor in Data Science.
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2. Business Analyst Master’s Program
This Power BI certification course by Simplilearn is a globally recognized Business Analyst program that’s designed to teach and train you on planning and monitoring, requirements management, communication, and elicitation.
This way, you can learn the latest tools, work on real-world projects, and attend IBM expert-taught masterclasses to help you become job-ready.
The course features exclusive hackathons, live interactions with IBM leadership, capstone, and more than 14 real-life projects. You also get over 150 hours of live interaction and live masterclasses by industry experts.
With a certificate in Business Analysis, you can take your analyst career in multiple directions depending on your career goals and experience.
The course is one of the best in the field, making it the perfect class to take to jumpstart your career and enjoy endless growth opportunities.
Among the objectives of this course include:
- Giving you extensive expertise in business analysis
- Mastery of concepts and skills needed for your business analyst career
- Helping you become an expert in Tableau, Excel, Agile ScrumMaster, CBAP, CCBA, SQL, and Agile Scrum Foundation
- Gain skills required to build interactive dashboards, understand business analyst competencies, and gain insight into business analysis planning and monitoring
- Get domain experience through real-world projects and virtual simulations
- Be prepared for the business analyst role
You’ll learn several important skills that will help you in your career including absorbing agile philosophy and gaining deep knowledge of Scrum. This way, you can apply Scrum effectively at the workplace.
The IIBA-endorsed course is aligned with IIBA BABOK V3 standards, which will prepare you to ace exams like CCBA, ECBA, and CBAP. You’ll also get 25 IIBA CDUs once you complete the course.
In the Business Analyst Capstone project, you’ll meet expert industry trainers for high-touch mentoring sessions over four weeks. This way, you can enhance your analyst skills with industry-relevant, hands-on projects and bring together each course into one portfolio.
Plus, you’ll get to choose from three industries – banking, retail, or hospitality – and work in their Capstone projects.
In the BABOK guide, you’ll get to cover six knowledge areas including strategy analysis, solution evaluation, requirements life cycle management, analysis, and design definition.
Some of the projects you’ll cover as part of this Power BI certification course include sales performance analysis, customer, and product analysis.
You’ll also cover the sales dashboard to learn how to build one that presents product metrics and statistical trends over time.
There isn’t any mandated prerequisite to take this course, but you need some experience in business analysis. The course lasts for one year, where you can work at your own pace through e-learning video modules, but you can enroll in over 75 instructor-led training classes.
To enroll in the program, you can register on the Simplilearn site and pay using a credit or debit card, Diner’s Club, or PayPal. This gives you access to the learning content, exclusive forums moderated by industry experts and faculty, and monthly mentoring sessions.
The program advisors for the course include Tim Jerome, Bryan Campbell, Jef Allen, and Nadine Miller. These are all experts in Project Management and Business Analysis.
3. Power BI Certification Training Course
This Power BI certification training will help you learn several concepts including Power BI desktop layouts, DAX commands, reports, layouts, dashboards, and functions. You’ll explore to experiment, prepare, present, and fix data quickly and easily.
The training will help you to solve business problems, get the most out of Power BI, and improve business operations.
You’ll master dashboard development from published reports, create practical recipes on tasks you can do with the software, and discover better insight from the data.
Among the key features of the training include:
- Six hours of enriched learning
- Self-paced learning with lifetime access
- Course completion certificate (industry-recognized)
The training options include corporate training or self-paced learning. Corporate training is customized to team needs and includes blended self-paced and instructor-led learning options.
Self-paced learning gives you lifetime access to content curated by industry experts and support 24/7.
Corporate training also offers flexible pricing, an enterprise-grade learning management system, dashboards for teams and individuals, and 24/7 support and learner assistance.
The curriculum has no prerequisites, so you can use it to understand how to use Power BI tools and create customized visualizations.
Once you complete the course, you’ll get a certification that has lifelong validity. To unlock your certification, you must complete the training, which tests you in skills such as consuming and transforming data, modeling and visualizing data, and configuring dashboards, apps, and reports in Power BI.
Practice tests are included as part of the course to prepare you ahead of the certification exam.
4. Data Analyst Master’s Program
This Power BI certification program is taught in collaboration with IBM and is designed to make you an expert in data analytics.
The course helps you learn analytics tools and techniques, the languages of Python and R, how to work with SQL databases, and also how to apply statistics and predictive analytics.
The course provides sessions with IBM leadership that include live Master Classes, exclusive hackathons, AMA sessions with over 120 hours of content, 15 real-life projects, and a capstone.
You can expect a certificate from IBM and Simplilearn upon completion of the training. These certificates are industry-recognized and attest to your skills as an expert in data analysis. You’ll also get access to an IBM Cloud Lite account.
Through the course, you’ll learn how to master descriptive and inferential statistics, data blending, data extracts, regression analysis, hypothesis testing, and forecasting.
You’ll also gain expertise in using Power BI and Tableau for data visualization and learn how to organize data and design dashboards.
Special emphasis is placed on non-technical employees but you’ll need a basic understanding of mathematical concepts to complete the course successfully.
Some of the projects you’ll get to work on include real-life scenarios in Category Performance Analysis, Stock Market, Banking, Healthcare, Retail, and Insurance.
The course advisor is Ronald van Loon, an author and one of the three most influential people in Big Data. He’s also the CEO of Intelligent World and a top thought leader in Data Science and Digital Transformation.
5. Introduction to Power BI
This introductory Power BI course by Datacamp gives you a 360-degree overview of how to use and explore Power BI to build impactful reports.
The course offers 19 videos and 55 exercises that you can watch in six hours and learn how to use the popular BI platform via hands-on exercises.
You’ll learn how to load and transform data using Power Query and the importance of data models. You’ll also get to know how to drill down into reports, make them fully interactive, and use Data Analysis Expressions (DAX) formulas to level up your skills.
The key features of the course include:
- Instructor-led training for 24 hours
- Self-paced videos for 16 hours
- Project work and exercises for 30 hours
- Flexible schedule
- 24/7 lifetime access and support
- Certificate of completion
- Job assistance
Among the topics you’ll learn in the course include an in-depth understanding of Power BI and how it works in different settings. You’ll also understand the different Power BI components such as Desktop, mobile apps, and Power BI service.
With the knowledge from the course, you should be able to visualize and analyze data, derive insights from databases or spreadsheets, and create compelling reports and visualizations.
You’ll also be able to draw real-time insights and deploy them on demand, create, share and collaborate using the information from the data and get work done.
If you’re looking for a job in business analysis, business development, and the like, or you’re a statistician, finance, or marketing professional, this is an excellent Power BI course to start with.
6. Power BI Training and Certification
This Power BI certification course by MindMajix helps you master the tool while learning key concepts in Power BI Desktop, Power Pivot, and Power Query among other topics.
You get 20 hours of live training and 16 hours of lab sessions, assistance and support, plus a completion certificate.
The course includes other topics like data modeling, DAX, creating dashboards and reports, and visualizations. Once done, you’ll work on three real-time projects, which equip you with the skills you need to clear the certification exam.
Among the topics you’ll cover in the course include:
- Getting started with Power BI
- Introduction to Desktop and Query Editor
- Data and Relationship View
- PowerApp
- Power BI Service and Mobile
- Practice test and interview questions
You’ll be required to work on industry-based projects to test your knowledge of Power BI training and discuss real-time use cases. This gives you hands-on expertise on the Power BI concepts you’ll learn throughout the course.
Some of the projects include CoVID Tracker, HedgeAct, Radio Cabs, Hyper Market Sales Data, and a Global Bicycle SuperMarket.
There’s a course for individuals, which is self-paced and offers videos similar to live online sessions. You can access this for a lifetime and get the latest Power BI training videos.
Live virtual training sessions are also available with live demos of features and practicals. You can schedule your sessions at your own time and get instructor-led training with lab practicals and real-time projects.
For business, corporate training is provided to give your teams the skills they need before adopting Power BI. You can choose the best mode for your time and budget from live, instructor-led online to self-paced or classroom modes.
The course instructor is Meenakshi, a Power BI specialist with over seven year’s experience using the tool and industrial experience. The course takes six weeks, but it can be customized based on your needs.
To take the course, you’ll need basic database management knowledge and minimal knowledge in CRUD operations but these aren’t mandatory as the trainer will explain the basics.
7. Analyzing and Visualizing Data with Power BI
This is a four-week Power BI certification course that’s designed to help professionals work with data in the tool. The beginner’s guide helps you become confident in working with data, creating visualizations, and preparing dashboards and reports.
If you’re a beginner-level data professional, student, academic, researcher, or analyst, this course is perfect for you.
The course requirements include using a Windows PC, because the tool is only available on Windows, and a work or school email account to publish reports.
The course demands 10-20 hours per week and is free to take, but you’ll need to pay to get a verified certificate.
- In the self-paced course, you’ll learn the following topics
- How to identify and work with data sets for businesses
- Importing and preparing data to load into a data model
- Different data visualization types and their purpose
- How to create and share fully functional reports and dashboards in Power BI
The course is taught by Pete Benbow, the team lead for Analytics and Business Intelligence at Davidson College and is offered by DavidsonX.
Once completed and certified, you can add the certificate to your resume or CV and post it directly on LinkedIn.
The instructor-signed certificate you get upon completion comes complete with the institution’s logo. This means that your achievement has been verified and it also increases your job prospects.
The verified certificate is also an additional incentive for you to complete the course. Not only that, but taking this course also helps support the edX mission to fund free education for everyone globally.
Wrapping Up
Power BI is an excellent analytics tool that helps convert your unstructured data into insightful and visually compelling stories.
The Microsoft tool consists of different other tools such as the Power BI Service, Desktop, and a range of iOS and Android apps that help you take big data and turn it into actionable insights for decision making.
You can use disparate data sources in Power BI and it will convert the data into custom visuals designed to help your organization read the information.
This way, you can get a clear idea of what to do about your products and services to meet your customers’ needs.
With the right data visualization, you can make correct and critical business decisions, which is why these Power BI certifications come in handy.
You’ll learn everything you need to know to use Power BI to benefit your business and gain proficiency to create real value, not just gather numbers.
