Board vs Microsoft Power BI comparison

Board International and Microsoft are both solutions in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category. Board International is ranked #23 with an average rating of 7.7, while Microsoft is ranked #1 with an average rating of 7.9. Board International holds a 0.5% mindshare in BIT, compared to Microsoft’s 21.4% mindshare. Additionally, 94% of Board International users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 93% of Microsoft users who would recommend it.

Board

Read 36 Board reviews

602 Views
417 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

Microsoft Power BI

Read 319 Microsoft Power BI reviews

24,917 Views
19,745 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

Board

Microsoft Power BI

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

Board and Microsoft Power BI compete in the business intelligence and analytics market. Microsoft Power BI is seen as the leading product due to its extensive features and value for money.

Features: Board includes effective budgeting, planning, and forecasting tools, ideal for finance-centered applications, while offering performance management capabilities. Microsoft Power BI provides advanced data visualization, integration capabilities, and broad data connectivity support, emphasizing data analytics and extensive reporting features.

Room for Improvement: Board could enhance its user interface to make it more intuitive and improve documentation for non-technical users. It could also expand on pre-built templates for quicker deployment. Power BI could improve training resources for beginners, enhance its mobile experience, and streamline performance with very large data sets.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Board offers a tailored deployment model adaptable to organizational requirements but may require more time and effort. Microsoft Power BI features a straightforward, cloud-based deployment enabling rapid integration with wide-reaching online resources and comprehensive customer support.

Pricing and ROI: Board generally involves higher setup costs with customization but offers excellent ROI in finance-specific sectors. Microsoft Power BI is more cost-effective, with lower initial costs and flexible pricing, providing higher ROI through its scalability and applicability in various scenarios.

To learn more, read our detailed Board vs. Microsoft Power BI Report (Updated: February 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Board vs. Microsoft Power BI

February 2025

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Helped 837,501 peers since 2012

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

Board

Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

23rd

Ranking in Reporting

20th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Business Performance Management (10th)

Microsoft Power BI

Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

1st

Ranking in Reporting

1st

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

319

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of Board is 0.5%, down from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Power BI is 21.4%, down from 22.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

Featured Reviews

Wiboon Thabsuwan

Senior Consultant at IMD Company Limited

Easy to use and requires less time to learn or understand its features

I think the product is good in terms of ease of use. The interface looks really nice and very easy to use. Every command appears in the icon. It looks like you don't have to understand everything about the command. You do not necessarily have to know more, or I would say that there is less time for our study about the products. Functionality-wise, it is quite easy to use and requires less time to understand or learn about the product. I am a software vendor, so I do not use the tool myself. I use it for my clients. My clients mostly use it for budgeting and timing purposes. I would say that's really less maintenance at all because they can do everything by themselves. It is good in terms of ease of use.

Read full review

James Balbach

Executive Director, Decision Support at Community Health Network

Robust system consistently elevates data visualization and seamlessly updates with user-driven advancements

Power BI is a general-use visualization system. I can express the performance of our network through high-level key performance indicators. It allows me to show detailed improvements in quality and safety and patient experience. I create improvement dashboards for task forces and work teams. I have built analytic dashboards that guide analytics, enabling research and dataset manipulation.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"It is useful for self-analysis regarding company data and helps to find areas where we can improve."

"By using Board we can do a lot of free analysis. We can change the layout of a table and even the end-user can change the layout of a table. And in Board 11.2 you can save the layout. That's very useful for the customer, it's a very good function."

"It allows people to quickly create dashboards with reports."

"The support from the BOARD team and their consultants is great. Whenever I use technical support, they are good."

"What is very valuable is the ability to customize. We didn't see a solution out there that really matched exactly what our functional requirements would be. So we were able to work with New Brain, our integrator, and we were able to build from the ground up what we wanted, and I think that's pretty unique to BOARD."

"BOARD technical support is knowledgeable and helpful."

"It has definitely saved us time, especially in our budget and planning processes."

"we are able to easily export data. When directors need financial information, we can go in the system and export the data, then send it out so they have it ready and available. If they are not in the office, we can email it to them. In addition, all the managers are now more on top of their expenses and their budget."

More Board pros

"The initial setup is simple to do."

"The most valuable feature would be the abundance of connectors. It is also easy to use."

"Reporting is the best thing about Power BI. And it could help improve decision-making in many ways. Power BI is flexible and easier to use compared to tools."

"Its ease of use is most valuable."

"I like having the ability to connect Excel files as data inputs."

"The capability to add custom visuals and create Power BI apps. You can package datasets, synchronization details, and dashboards into a single app."

"Provides a full platform (database, ETL, reporting, analysis, and so on)"

"The DAX coding language is good for creating formulae."

More Microsoft Power BI pros

Cons

"The one thing that I think we would like to see in terms of improvement of the application is the ability to print. It's fantastic to have all of these graphic visualization of data, but we're not able to very easily just print... From my perspective, if you can have a little "print" button and then you just click it and it would produce what's on the screen, that would be very helpful."

"One thing that I personally would like to see is additional visualization tools for visuals."

"The initial setup was very complex for us."

"One of the things that I would like to see is the ability to have a rule directly referenced on the cubes."

"It would be huge in the future if BOARD offered a lot more graphs and presentations, and it was a lot easier to use."

"The engine of the Board should be made powerful like the engine of IBM planning which is more powerful in terms of performance. The consolidated finance area also needs improvement."

"We are looking at ways to improve how we deal with security in BOARD and other similar things. "

"The setup was a bit complex."

More Board cons

"The formatting template could be improved."

"I have to write scripts to query data for analyzing performance."

"In an upcoming release, the solution could be simplified and have a more complete product package rather than a suite of products that we have to put together."

"It should be more user-friendly and simple."

"Its setup and support should be improved. We would like to see more material for developers that provides clear explanations about how we can do data mining by using Microsoft BI. It would also be good if we can connect a feature to other customized machine learning solutions."

"It needs more analytic tools."

"The reporting could be a bit better."

"When I create measures, sometimes the error messages aren't clear. It makes me spend more time searching for solutions. I need the error messages to be more specific. So, I would like clearer error messages when creating measures."

More Microsoft Power BI cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is not the cheapest product on earth, but you get so much. It provides good value for money."

"Find a partner who will take responsibility for the implementation, and be available for support."

"The solution is quite expensive, if it is made cheaper then we can have more clients. I rate it four out of ten."

"In terms of the pricing, it was reasonable. BOARD is not the lowest in the market, but it was reasonable for us."

"The tool's price is a bit high compared to other solutions."

"Its cost seems to be unreasonable if you have many users, but for a lesser number of users, it is reasonable. It is $10 per month. Clients easily accept this option, so they must think it is reasonable. It is quite cheap as compared to other tools, such as Tableau. One of the best things about this solution is that it has a trial version."

"Microsoft BI for desktop is free to use, and you can download and use it."

"We pay on a monthly basis which is approximately $10 per user on the Microsoft Power BI Pro license. At the moment we are still down at 400 users, but once we reach 500 users, we will move to the premium edition. The premium is $5,000 for unlimited users. Currently, with the 40 users, the cost is roughly $500."

"I have never worked on licensing, but I have heard that it is reasonable."

"In general, Microsoft BI's price is lower compared to Alteryx."

"I am satisfied with its price. Its price is very less as compared to Tableau and QlikView."

"As far as I am aware you do not need a license for the solution."

"Regarding cost, the initial investment wasn't too high, but ongoing licensing could add up."

More Microsoft Power BI pricing and cost advice

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Comparison Review

it_user79932

Senior Manager - BI Head at NVidia

Feb 4, 2015

Comparison of SAP BO, Tableau, QlikView, Cognos, Microsoft, OBIEE and Pentaho

1. SAP BO/BI Enterprise scalability Security Ease of use Semantic layer 2. Tableau Visualization Data discovery Turnaround time 3. IBM Cognos Enterprise scalability Security In-memory feature 4. MS BI - Flexibility 5. Pentaho - Open source but still enterprise grade 6. QlikView Data…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Insurance Company

Educational Organization

43%

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

Is Board better than Anaplan as a Business Intelligence (BI) solution?

We've had several FP&A departments include Anaplan in their analytics discussions, and while BI information IS generated, the focus is generally on compiling input from various sources and simu...

See all answers

What do you like most about Board?

All the reports are prepared automatically.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Board?

Some of my company's customers are interested to see the predictive analytics part of the tool. Some customers would like to leverage or prioritize predictive analytics as the main feature, but som...

See all answers

Seeking lightweight open source BI software

There are many...It would rather depend what System BI architecture or Enterprise legacy you have at your end...I would recommend as follows: 1) If you have legacies of SAP, Oracle - look for SAP...

See all answers

Is Power BI a complete platform or only a visualization tool?

Power BI is an advanced visualization tool oriented to big data with a very complete set of widgets to visualize information, control users accessing information, the configuration of governance po...

See all answers

How does Oracle OBIEE compare with Microsoft BI?

Oracle OBIEE is great in allowing design and creativity per the individual needs of the organization. Dashboards are fully customizable and very user-friendly. This solution is very stable. Oracle ...

See all answers

Comparisons

Anaplan vs Board

Compared 29% of the time

Pigment vs Board

Compared 13% of the time

SAP Analytics Cloud vs Board

Compared 12% of the time

Oracle Hyperion vs Board

Compared 10% of the time

CCH Tagetik vs Board

Compared 7% of the time

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Tableau vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 15% of the time

Amazon QuickSight vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 8% of the time

Domo vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 8% of the time

Databricks vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 7% of the time

KNIME vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 6% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Board

February 2025

Download Board product report

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Power BI

February 2025

Download Microsoft Power BI product report

Also Known As

No data available

SSRS, SSAS, MSBI, MS Reporting Services, Microsoft BI Tools, Microsoft Big Data, Power BI Pro, MS BI

Overview

BOARD International - headquartered in Switzerland - is a leading global provider of software for improving business results through better decision making. By unifying Business Intelligence and Corporate Performance Management into a single product, BOARD enables companies to achieve a shared vision of their performance across the entire organization, and thus a single version of the truth.

BOARD provides seamless solutions for • Reporting & Analysis • Budgeting, Planning & Forecasting • Profitability Modelling & Optimization • Simulation & What-if-Analysis • Scorecarding & Strategy Management • Financial Consolidation. Based on visual modelling, BOARD has enabled global companies to deploy BI and CPM applications without a single line of code in a fraction of the time and cost associated with traditional solutions.

Board International

Microsoft Power BI is a powerful tool for data analysis and visualization. This tool stands out for its ability to merge and analyze data from various sources. Widely adopted across different industries and departments, Power BI is instrumental in creating visually appealing dashboards and generating insightful business intelligence reports. Its intuitive interface, robust visualization capabilities, and seamless integration with other Microsoft applications empower users to easily create interactive reports and gain valuable insights.

Microsoft

Sample Customers

Coca-Cola, Puma, Desigual, Ricoh, KPMG, H&M, Groupe SEB

Accenture Adidas Aetna AIG Airbus Alibaba Allstate Amazon American Express Aon AT&T Audi Bank of America BASF Bayer Berkshire Hathaway Boeing Coca-Cola Comcast Cisco Coca-Cola Dell Disney Emirates Equinix FedEx Ford GE Google H&M Home Depot Honda IBM Intel JPMorgan Chase Kellogg's Kroger L'Oréal McDonald's Merck MetLife Microsoft Nike Oracle P&G PepsiCo Procter & Gamble Prudential Financial SAP Siemens Snapchat Spotify Starbucks Target Toyota T-Mobile Unilever Visa Walmart WeWork World Bank Xerox

Buyer's Guide

Board vs. Microsoft Power BI

February 2025

Free Report: Board vs. Microsoft Power BI

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