In the rapidly-evolving field of data analytics, (AI/BI) dashboards and Power BI stand out as two formidable approaches, each offering unique strengths and catering to specific use cases. Power BI has earned its reputation for delivering user-friendly, highly customisable visualisations and reports for data analysis. On the other hand, AI/BI dashboards have gained good traction due to their seamless integration with the Databricks platform, making them an attractive option for data practitioners. This session will provide a comparison of these two tools, highlighting their respective features, strengths and potential limitations. Understanding the nuances between these tools is crucial for organizations aiming to make informed decisions about their data analytics strategy. This session will equip participants with the knowledge needed to select the most appropriate tool or combination of tools to meet their data analysis requirements and drive data-informed decision-making processes.

At Haleon, we've leveraged Databricks APIs and serverless compute to develop customer-facing applications for our business. This innovative solution enables us to efficiently deliver SAP invoice and order management data through front-end applications developed and served via our API Gateway. The Databricks lakehouse architecture has been instrumental in eliminating the friction associated with directly accessing SAP data from operational systems, while enhancing our performance capabilities. Our system acheived response times of less than 3 seconds from API call, with ongoing efforts to optimise this performance. This architecture not only streamlines our data and application ecosystem but also paves the way for integrating GenAI capabilities with robust governance measures for our future infrastructure. The implementation of this solution has yielded significant benefits, including a 15% reduction in customer service costs and a 28% increase in productivity for our customer support team.