FAQ

You’re curious. We like that.

Illustration of four hands raised up, representing people asking questions

Power BI, Power Query, dashboards, DAX - what do they all mean? What are the trainings like, and are they suitable for me? What will I learn? How will I learn? Is there a Starbucks close by? What’s for lunch?

Deep breaths - we’ve got answers. And if you can’t find it here, get in touch.

Learning Power BI

Our training

Technical

Payment

  • Here are some aspects of our training that we think really stand out from other providers:

    • we reach out to you prior to your training to understand your particular work challenges and learning needs, make sure your expectations of the training session are aligned, and address any questions or concerns you have

    • we keep our classes small (maximum of 9 learners) so that it supports a highly interactive and engaging learning experience

    • we work on sharpening your problem-solving skills and conceptual understanding, in addition to know-hows

    • we offer a complimentary personalised 60-minute coaching session post-training to support you to apply what you’ve learned

    For more details on what is covered in each course and upcoming sessions, please check out our course pages.

  • Each course lasts 2 days, from 9.30am to 5.30pm, with a one-hour lunch break.

    In each training session, we teach not just the know-how, but also the conceptual understanding of data problems, how they relate to the features of Power BI, as well as real-world challenges you may face when applying your learning to your work.

    Learn more about our approach and training details here!

  • Our course is longer than those offered by other training providers because we believe in delivering a truly empowering learning experience.

    We focus on not just teaching you the basics, but also ensuring you gain a deep understanding of the concepts, along with critical thinking skills to handle real-world data challenges. With interactive sessions and hands-on exercises, our goal is to make sure you leave the course feeling fully confident and capable so you can hit the ground running and apply what you’ve learnt right away!

  • We typically run public training sessions once every quarter.

    If you don't see a date that works for you, drop us a note and we'll put you on our waitlist so we can get in touch with you when we announce new dates!

  • Drop us a note and we’ll be in touch to schedule a private training session for your team.

  • At this moment, we do not offer customised trainings. 

    Instead, our courses have been designed to cover the most impactful fundamentals, principles, and know-how that are relevant to business analytics problems. We focus on supporting our learners to understand the know-why so that they can flexibly apply their learnings to problems of all shapes and sizes. 

    Post-training, learners then make use of the complimentary personalised 60-minute coaching session to work through challenges unique to their situation – akin to a 1-on-1 customised learning session.

  • Short answer: not yet.

    We're developing new courses on how AI can be used in data analysis and analytical workflows. However, they'll only be available to learners who've first completed our current foundational courses.

    This is a deliberate choice. What we’ve found from our own experience is that using AI well in data work depends on two things:

    1. Business judgment: knowing what questions to ask, understanding stakeholders, and defining what success looks like; and

    2. Technical understanding: knowing the principles behind good analysis and how data models and Power BI work, so you can tell whether what AI just produced is actually correct.


    Without this foundation from our courses, AI can quickly become a shortcut that generates answers you can't reliably validate — or that answer the wrong question in the first place.

    Our foundational courses develop these core skills first. Our upcoming AI-focused courses then show you how to apply them to modern analytical workflows that include AI.

    Sign up here to be notified when they launch.

  • You can use either a personal or company laptop for our training sessions.

    To ensure a smooth and efficient learning experience, we use virtual machines and screen sharing. This approach helps us focus on learning rather than sorting out technical issues that arise from different software versions. All you need is a laptop that can connect to WiFi and has a web browser (e.g. Chrome, Firefox, Edge). 

    Rest assured, no private or confidential information will be shared during the training.

  • You will require an operating system of Windows 10 or later (64-bit), a compatible version of Excel, and a compatible version of Power BI Desktop.

    Watch this video to find out how you can check your Excel version.

  • We use Microsoft Power BI and Microsoft Excel. 

    Power BI includes Power Query, Power Pivot, and visualisations, all in one software. 

    Excel includes Power Query as “Get and Transform” within the Data tab since 2016. It also has Power Pivot as a free add-in. Watch this to install Power Query and Power Pivot in your Excel. 

    If you’re interested in the courses on Power Query or Power Pivot, and have both Power BI and Excel on your computer, you’re good to go. Otherwise, you can read our post that guides you through installing Power Query and Power Pivot in your Excel, and download Power BI here.

    Our course on data visualisation requires Power BI, which you can download here.

  • Currently, our training sessions are held in person in Singapore.

    However, if you or your team are based outside of Singapore and want to arrange for private remote sessions, we'd love to hear from you! Please reach out to us to discuss your options.

  • When you sign up for our courses, you'll be asked whether your company is sponsoring you or if you're paying out of pocket.

    Regardless of your payment method, you won't need to pay at the time of registration. Instead, we'll send an invoice to your email, which you can then present to your company for payment processing.

  • No, we do not accept Skillsfuture Credit as payment for our courses at this time.

About Power BI

  • No, it is not a prerequisite to know Excel prior to learning Power BI, though we do expect that you are somewhat familiar with Excel and/or work with it on data-related tasks in the course of your work.

    While Excel lets you explore data in a transparent and intuitive way, there is a limit to its usefulness, especially when it comes to large datasets. If you work with large spreadsheets or need to combine data from many different sources, and already do so with Pivot Table and other similar features, you may find Power BI really beneficial, as it lets you easily link your data sources and quickly get to metrics and insights based on those relationships.

    Ultimately, they are similar but different tools within a toolbox that let you tackle various types of data problems.

  • AI is a powerful tool that can help you write formulas, generate reports, and explore data faster than ever.

    But what AI cannot do is

    1. decide which business questions are worth asking, or

    2. whether understand the analysis it has produced is actually correct.

    Those decisions still depend on your understanding of the business and the fundamentals of good data analysis.

    That's what our training develops. Through hands-on case studies using Power BI, you’ll learn how to frame the right questions, structure your data, and create robust analyses — skills that you need to confidently review, challenge, and improve AI-generated work.

    Power BI is how we teach those skills, and is what we focus on in our foundational courses. Once you have them, you'll be able to work effectively with AI — and whatever tools come next.

  • Our courses are designed for data analysts and professionals who work daily with data. 

    If you’re spending a lot of time cleaning and manipulating data in Excel or Power BI, you may be keen to find out how you can do it differently. Our trainings will help you to see your business problems from a data perspective, so you know what and how to get the insights you need from your data. 

    You can also learn more from our articles and explainers on our blog. If you find them useful, you may wish to sign up for a course. 

  • Absolutely. But first, a quick question:

    When you face a tough math question, do you:

    (a) Ignore it

    (b) Get someone else to solve it but don't learn how

    (c) Get someone else to solve it and learn how

    (d) Try to figure it out on your own, then get help but don't learn how

    (e) Try to figure it out on your own, then get help and learn how

    (f) Figure it out on your own because you always do

    If you answered (e) or (f), that’s a great starting point for our courses! If not, our training approach may not be a good fit for your learning style.

    Our training involves hands-on exercises and active participation from our learners because we believe the best way to learn is to get curious and engage with the material.

  • Our courses are designed for working analysts and executives who are familiar with pivot tables and VLOOKUP, and work with Excel at least every other day on data analytics tasks - be it cleaning or data modelling.

    Our training will properly cover the fundamentals typically missed by self-taught learners who have not gone through any structured training (whether in a formal classroom, textbook, or video course). Since we are practitioner-focused, we also touch on common pitfalls, real-world business challenges, managing stakeholders and getting buy-in, as well as transitioning from Excel to Power BI.

    You can also take a look at the detailed syllabus for each course: Power BI #1, Power BI #2, and Power BI #3.

  • You can learn on your own, and we love self-driven learners like you! But if you’ve spent hours going through pages of Google results or trying to get ChatGPT to understand your specific context each time you have a data question, we can help. 

    Our trainings are not a general showcase of how great Excel or Power BI is; we tailor them to be relevant to your work. The idea is to help you develop an intuitive sense of what your business questions are, and how to technically shape and transform your data to answer them, as easily and quickly as you (and your managers) want it.

    Read more about our training approach, or find out more about our courses. You can also get a feel of what we have to offer with our articles.

  • Our courses are designed modularly, and can be taken independent of each other. 

    It is not a prerequisite to take Power BI #1 prior to Power BI #2. Similarly, you need not have attended Power BI #1 and / or #2 prior to Power BI #3.

    We have a good mix of learners who took the courses in sequential order, and those who took them based on their availability but eventually complete all 3 courses for the end-to-end picture.

  • You can think of Power BI as a data preparation, calculation, and visualisation tool made up of a family of Microsoft tools.

  • Power Query is a tool within the Power BI platform that automates your data cleaning and preparation work. Say goodbye to mind-numbing yet critical work such as:

    • Tedious copying and pasting of updated data to your reports;

    • Painful merging of many tables into a huge one that slows down your laptop (because too many VLOOKUP()s; and

    • Manual filtering and deletion of unnecessary columns and spacing.

    Once you learn Power Query, you’ll be floored by how much time, energy, and hair-pulling you could have saved if only you had learnt it earlier (This is a common refrain we hear during trainings)!

  • You’ve probably heard of Pivot Table. Power Pivot is like Pivot Table, but way more powerful. With Power Pivot, you can:

    • Import data from multiple sources;

    • Relate them simply using drag-and-drop;

    • Write efficient and flexible metrics that

    • Work delightfully well with slicers for on-the-fly slice-and-dice

    • Analyze virtually unlimited rows of data.

    It is available both in Power BI and as an add-in in Excel.

More questions? Get in touch.