On June 14 at 10:00 AM, FIDES had the privilege of hosting an insightful and highly engaging guest lecture by Professor Manoj from Christ University, a renowned academician and expert in data analytics. The session was thoughtfully organized to equip students with practical skills and a deep understanding of Power BI, one of the most in-demand business intelligence tools used globally across industries.

It was a moment of pride and honor to welcome Professor Manoj to our campus. His session brought immense value, bridging the gap between academic learning and industry requirements. The session began with a warm welcome, followed by Professor Manoj introducing Power BI and its real-world applications in analyzing, visualizing, and interpreting data effectively.

He explained that Power BI enables users to transform raw data into rich visuals, helping users make better, data-driven decisions. He highlighted the three core components of Power BI—Power Query (for data transformation), Power Pivot (for advanced data modeling), and Power View (for creating visualizations).

A significant part of the session focused on how Power BI complements Microsoft Excel, making it easier to manage and analyze large datasets. Professor Manoj demonstrated how data in Excel—such as structured tables like employee details or unstructured inputs like feedback notes or raw logs—can be directly connected to Power BI. Once imported, this data can be cleaned, filtered, and modeled using Excel-integrated tools, and then visually represented in Power BI with dynamic charts, slicers, and dashboards.

One of the memorable points he made was that "our brains hate numbers but love colors", highlighting the importance of data visualization. He showed how complex Excel spreadsheets could be made more intuitive using bar charts, pie charts, line graphs, and interactive visuals. For instance, Excel-based attendance records were transformed into a line graph to monitor patterns over time, while departmental headcounts were effectively summarized using a pie chart.