During the Computing Conference 2016 held in Hangzhou on 13 October, Jack Ma, founder and CEO of Alibaba, reviewed the technological progress in the past few years and predicted that the future would be mainly about new type of retailing, manufacturing, finance, technology and resource. Development in these five areas will impact not only China, the world beyond, but also every one of us.

1. New type of retailing. Traditional retailing face rising challenge from e-commerce in modern metropolis because it fails to seize the opportunity and adapt to the future trend. Traditional business only dwells on the past, but don’t know how to adapt to new technologies, how to cooperate with internet companies and how to make us of big data technologies, etc. Whether we admit it or not, traditional retailing business, featured by real estate, will certainly be challenged in the future. If it is not today, then it will be someday in the future.

2. New type of manufacturing. For the past two or three decades, scale and standard are attached high importance to; in the next three decades, however, customized, personalized and smart service will be the new trend. The second wave of technological revolution will occur in IoT field. In the future, machines depend not on electricity, but on data. Besides, as retailing industry evolves, manufacturing industry will also gradually transform from B2C-based to C2B-based.

3. New type of finance. Finance industry was the very support for industrial growth in the past two centuries. In the past, development of 20% of small and mid-sized companies could promote development of 80% of world economy. In the future, however, the core focus of finance industry should become how to facilitate development of 80% of small and mid-sized companies. After the birth of internet finance, equality and transparency will be valued more, thus traditional finance industry will certainly face some challenge.

4. New type of technologies. After the emerge of mobile internet, PC chips evolved into mobile chips, while PC operating system also evolved into mobile operating system. In the past, machines depend on electricity; in the future, data will be at the core of any new type of technology. New technologies such as artificial intelligence and big data will only broaden the room of imagination for the mankind.

5. New type of resources. In the past, petrol and coal were the foundation of development; in the future, new energy and data will be at the core of any development. Dr Wang Jian once said that this was the first time human kind created a new type of resources. In the past, resources others had used would become useless; today, however, data other people used would only become more valuable if we use it well.
​

Source: tmtpost

Xero is easy to use online accounting software that’s designed specifically for small businesses. The Xero content pack for Power BI allows you to visualize and monitor the accounting data from within each Xero business. The out of box solution includes information such as cash position, top customers, invoices due and many more. The interactive reports allow you to easily explore your data to understand even more.

Xero Content Pack
With the Xero content pack for Power BI, you can see your data in a format that makes sense, and can analyze it with greater speed, efficiency, and understanding. You can create visualizations for the most commonly tracked small business metrics including cash position, revenue vs. expenses, profit/loss trend, and return on investment.

You can drill down more specifically to uncover insights like your best performing products or services, or see where your time is best spent, with important actionable items being presented front and centre. All the information in Power BI is dynamic, surfacing what’s important and giving you the power to dive into the detail.

Using Power BI - Action items
The Xero Content pack in Power BI has a tile dedicated to Action items. Action Items allow you, at a glance, to get a sense of where things are, and help you understand what things you can do in Xero to bring things up to date. Action Items help you keep your accounting data up to date, so you maximize the value of real time information to impact your business.

With Messages highlighting what you can action, and direct links into Xero, it’s quick and easy to “tick” things off and bring things up to date. And get back to running your business, completely up to date.

Power BI is a suite of business analytics tools to analyze data and share insights. Power BI dashboards provide a 360-degree view for business users with their most important metrics in one place, updated in real time, and available on all of their devices. With one click, users can explore the data behind their dashboard using intuitive tools that make finding answers easy.

​Creating a dashboard is simple thanks to over 50 connections to popular business applications, complete with pre-built dashboards crafted by experts that help you get up and running quickly. And you can access your data and reports from anywhere with the Power BI Mobile apps, which update automatically with any changes to your data.
​
If you are a data analyst delivering reporting and analytics to your organization, Power BI lets you be productive and creative with what you build. Power BI Desktop is a feature-rich data mashup and report authoring tool. Combine data from disparate databases, files, and web services with visual tools that help you understand and fix data quality and formatting issues automatically. With over 20 built-in visuals and a vibrant community of custom visualizations, create stunning reports that communicate your message effectively. With the Power BI service, publish reports securely to your organization and setup automatic data refresh so everyone has the latest information.

Power BI can unify all of your organization’s data, whether in the cloud or on-premises. Using the Power BI gateways, you can connect SQL Server databases, Analysis Services models, and many other data sources to your same dashboards in Power BI. If you already have reporting portals or applications, embed Power BI reports and dashboards for a unified experience.