Since Office and Excel 2016 are now available, many companies and individuals are facing an upgrade decision. If your work requires powerful business analytics capabilities, that decision may turn on what Excel 2016 can offer for you – and how well it works with other tools, such as Power BI Online and Power BI Desktop.

The Microsoft Excel Team tackles this question directly in a blog post about Excel 2016 and business analytics.  They highlight five main areas: Faster and easier ways to get data (formerly using Power Query), using the Get & Transform Data group on Excel’s Data tab; streamlined data analysis, using upgrades to Excel’s Pivot Tables and Pivot Charts; new time series forecasting capabilities, using the FORECAST.ETS functions; new and modern charts, such as Waterfall and Sunburst charts; and publishing and sharing in Power BI. They wrap up with notes about how you can take advantage of Excel Online to share work with your peers and clients.

Our take: You can go even further with Excel 2016 plus Analytic Solver Pro or Platform, which gives you advanced analytics power, ability to publish analytic model results in Power BI, and ability to run your analytic models directly in Excel Online.

Read the full article here: What’s new for business analytics in Excel 2016