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Business Intelligence Developer at Kathmandu
Real User
Easy to make people understand what is going on but I would like to use SQL properly within the reports
Pros and Cons
  • "The drag and drop facility to easily change the data correctly is the most valuable feature. I am happy to see visualizations. It's easier to talk about and make people understand what is going on."
  • "I would like to be able to use SQL properly within the reports and allow multiple people to work on the same report at the same time. If one person is working on it, then it causes issues for anyone else wanting to make reports."

What is our primary use case?

Our primary use case is to learn what Power BI can do. We also use it to create dashboards and to see what is available for people to use. We see how it integrates with Excel. You can easily get the data into a visualization but also still have access to the underlying data.  

We use it see how we can move away from an Excel spreadsheet but still give the users the correct answers to the questions that they have. I want to move away looking and fixing issues on particular lines and be able to easily answer the questions with visualizations so users can answer the questions a lot quicker and adapt to changes easier.  

How has it helped my organization?

I was self-learning it, we don't use it in our organization. We are looking to use it though in the future. We use a different tool and want to see if we can get more questions answered with Power BI. It's linked to Office 365 and Azure, so it would help us to answer some difficult questions and help identify issues/problems so we can find solutions and adapt the model a lot quicker. Going through over 100,000 lines of data takes too long and we need to be able to group the data more to be able to identify what works better, so a pie chart or map will help to identify issues that are not working. 

What is most valuable?

The drag and drop facility to easily change the data correctly is the most valuable feature. I am happy to see visualizations. It's easier to talk about and make people understand what is going on. But I need a way to work on getting the data showing correctly and be able to drill down into a worksheet like Excel, as people like to know what the top-level information means. It's important to be open and show them what they want. The number of visualizations is great. So many different options to choose from like heat maps to pie charts.

What needs improvement?

I would like to be able to use SQL properly within the reports and allow multiple people to work on the same report at the same time. If one person is working on it, then it causes issues for anyone else wanting to make reports. We want to condense some reports, so they work for all departments, and not have a version for every single department. Also, I would like to have formulas easier to complete and create. Having its own system means something new to learn, although saying that, it's not hard to pick up this information. 

Buyer's Guide
Microsoft Power BI
March 2025
Learn what your peers think about Microsoft Power BI. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2025.
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For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Microsoft BI for six months.  

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Microstrategy, and no, we have not swapped yet. I use both to keep on top of my own skill set. 

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

It depends on what you are wanting to do. Get the cost of users, and the servers, and work out if you are hosting, or if it's going into the cloud. 

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We didn't as it's a company decision to look to change the BI system. 

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Microsoft Azure
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Aditya Pawar - PeerSpot reviewer
Solutions Architect at DTSQUARED
Real User
Top 5Leaderboard
User-friendly, enables users to create multiple reports, and provides valuable data insights
Pros and Cons
  • "The product is user-friendly."
  • "Power BI shows reports on actual data, not metadata."

What is our primary use case?

I use the solution to visualize charts and graphs that provide data insights.

What is most valuable?

The product is user-friendly.

What needs improvement?

Power BI shows reports on actual data, not metadata.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using the solution for a few months.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I rate the tool’s stability an eight out of ten.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The tool is scalable. We can create multiple reports. We have two to three customers who use the solution. Within the client organizations, teams can use different solutions. It depends on the client’s needs.

How was the initial setup?

Creating a report takes 10 to 30 minutes, based on our requirements. It is easy if we have simple requirements. If it is complex, building a report can take days. The product is cloud-based.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

People use other tools in the market, like Tableau and Qlik Sense. They are good competitors.

What other advice do I have?

I work in data management. I focus on connecting to the source and getting the metadata information from the tool. I'm interested in metadata, not actual data. Integration with other tools is possible. The solution provides APIs.

I will recommend the solution to others, but my recommendation depends on the clients. If a customer uses Microsoft products, they can use Power BI. If someone wants to build good reports and perform data analysis, Power BI is a good choice. Any dashboarding tool is good for data analysis. Overall, I rate the product an eight out of ten.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Microsoft Power BI
March 2025
Learn what your peers think about Microsoft Power BI. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2025.
844,944 professionals have used our research since 2012.
reviewer1576593 - PeerSpot reviewer
Data Scientist at a energy/utilities company with 501-1,000 employees
Real User
Top 5
Provides good and logical visibility; difficult to easily share the dashboard with external people
Pros and Cons
  • "It provides good visibility."
  • "Things can slow down if you create too many pages."

What is our primary use case?

We are power industry consultants and we collect line operation data from power plants, preprocess it and then put it into some visualization software such as Tabula or Power BI. We then generate a regular test report for our customers who are power plant operators. 

What is most valuable?

It provides good visibility to the customer. They can see everything that's going on in a logical and user-friendly way. 

What needs improvement?

If you create too many pages, things can get heavy and slow down significantly. Once you create the dashboard, the data is updated at certain time intervals. I'd like to see more flexibility around those time options. It's difficult to easily share the dashboard with people outside the organization. 

For how long have I used the solution?

I've used this solution for two years. 

How are customer service and support?

The Microsoft support is not very good. When issues arise, I use Google or the user discussion boards. 

How would you rate customer service and support?

Neutral

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is straightforward, it's just a matter of downloading the software from Microsoft and installing it. 

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The solution is very affordable. 

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

The big difference between Tableau and Microsoft BI is the price tag which is much higher for Tableau. Tableau also provides a server for web publishing. It means you can easily share the visualization with people outside your company. In that sense, Power BI is more difficult. I also think Tableau may be more secure. 

What other advice do I have?

I would recommend this solution if you're a smaller organization. If you have massive data, like a corporation, then Tableau is probably the product to use. 
I rate this solution six out of 10. 

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Ariful Ambia - PeerSpot reviewer
Executive Director at a manufacturing company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Real User
User-friendly and can deal with all kinds of data but doesn't support all data
Pros and Cons
  • "The initial setup is relatively simple."
  • "Power BI doesn't support some open-source data sources that are new, such as SnowSQL, Iceberg, or ClickHouse."

What is most valuable?

We are impressed with Microsoft Power BI. The tools seem very easy to use and very interactive. People love to see us reinforcing it, especially the top management. They're okay with that. We are exploring Supersets. 

It's user-friendly.

The most important thing is the developing version is free. Only the online version you have to purchase. That is one of the key advantages we are getting. We can reduce the internal costs that way. 

It can take in all kinds of data to analyze. 

It's very comparable to other solutions on the market.

The initial setup is relatively simple. 

What needs improvement?

Power BI doesn't support some open-source data sources that are new, such as SnowSQL, Iceberg, or ClickHouse. Those are the data sources I didn't find in Power BI. Those data sources cannot be connected to Power BI. You need third-party support for that. This is the one key problem I have with Power BI right now.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have various departments in our company. While some departments have used it for maybe two years, my particular department has only used it for about a year. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

This is a stable product. I found, once, in the middle of the work, it shut down or something. However, it is stable. When I put some of the reports in the Power BI cloud version, everything worked fine. I was able to get the report data. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

As long as I can scale my data, I can scale the product. I just put my data into Power BI and do what I need to do. 

The data solution we have is open source. The whole team is working on it, and that's a team of 15 people. The number of people that are actively writing and reporting is maybe six or seven people. Maybe two or three people seeing are seeing report deposits and getting the outcomes. 

How are customer service and support?

We don't have any technical contract with anyone, whatever the problem comes up, we can solve it ourselves. In my country, I personally don't know anyone who is actually, is smart enough to show us anything extra that we don't already know.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We are exploring Power BI, Microsoft Synapse Analytics, and some BI features on Azure

We previously used Oracle BI. It's a good tool. Oracle BI is more for the enterprise, big enterprise, for big control of data security and can get into how you control your people, who can see what, et cetera. The downside is, it is very old. You will not get the very latest tools or visuals in Oracle BI. That, we can easily find in Power BI.

How was the initial setup?

The implementation process is relatively easy. One the junior developer can learn the process in maybe one or two days. He can catch up on Power BI and how it works. It is straightforward, I would say.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

We do have a license for the product. 

We purchased a few licenses for the top bosses who want to see the reports on the run, on their own PC, laptop, or mobile. We purchased a few licenses for the developers as well. other than that, no need to purchase a license.

What other advice do I have?

We have both on-premises and cloud versions. The advanced team who has actually been using it for around two years have an online version. They're putting the data online and showing it. I cannot say exactly what they do. However, on our side, we do not use an online version. We have the three versions that we are using now that are on-prem. 

Overall, it's a good solution. However, there are a lot of other really great similar solutions you can use as well.

I'd rate the solution at a seven out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Jose Antonio Lopez Mesa - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior data Engineer at Avantica
Real User
Top 10
Allows you to create full ETL workloads and build dashboards
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable feature is definitely the visual aspect and the DAX capabilities to virtually do anything."
  • "One opportunity for improvement would be on the Power Query side. As a consultant, I know Power Query is not the main strength of Power BI. It is not where Power BI shines, but many customers use Power Query to do full ETL workloads for deliverable cookies."

What is our primary use case?

We have many use cases, from creating full ETL workloads for supporting some dashboards to only building dashboards by themselves. For example, there is one stage where we had to do some data integration from several sources to assess the quality of the data that we are consuming for our projects. We had to ingest data and convert it using Power BI, which is useful but isn't the best ETL tool, and I understand that that is not its purpose. Finally, we built out a schema model and built reports upon that. It's a full project. 

We also have another project, where we are attempting to do some incremental refresh because we are ingesting a lot of data from lake sources and SQL sources. We are doing direct query and applying some optimization from Synapse.

I am currently using the latest version of Power BI.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature is definitely the visual aspect and the DAX capabilities to virtually do anything.

What needs improvement?

Something that everyone has suggested and that we are currently implementing and testing is the ability to export tables with the same format. That is something many customers were seeking, and right now it is possible to do that. Focusing on table support is a huge opportunity.

One opportunity for improvement would be on the Power Query side. As a consultant, I know Power Query is not the main strength of Power BI. It is not where Power BI shines, but many customers use Power Query to do full ETL workloads for deliverable cookies.

When you try to process a lot of data from one million records, it breaks. The computer runs out of CPU and memory. It's terrible, but I know it's not its main purpose, so that would be my suggestion.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It's stable, but the desktop is not so stable. I have experienced several crashes. I would say there is a lot of opportunity for improvement on that.

A couple of people are needed for deployment and maintenance. You always need a developer who is proficient on Power Query and maybe some other DevOps guy who sets up the pipeline. So, maybe two people at most. It's very easy.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Scalability on the ETL side is not so good. When you run the workloads on service, you can fail almost anything, but it's not exactly the best for scaling.

On the virtualization side, I would say it's good.

How are customer service and support?

I haven't actually needed much technical support. I know there are forums and people respond, but I haven't really sought that out. There is so much documentation online, there are books online, and there are YouTube channels from guys that provide solutions to issues and to some other stuff. The community is very proficient.

How was the initial setup?

It is very easy. Even non-IT professionals use it and deliver value to the company.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate this solution 8 out of 10. 

My advice is to just jump right into it, download the Power BI desktop and start looking at YouTube channels. There are lots of people who have made wonderful things on YouTube.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
PeerSpot user
President & Owner at Altrim Systems
Reseller
Good visibility, graphic visuals, and easy to install
Pros and Cons
  • "It gives us, the ability to do a lot of analysis quickly, similar to ad hoc analysis."
  • "One of the more difficult things to do is to export some of the data from Power BI to Excel."

What is our primary use case?

We are Microsoft resellers.

We use it for clients to extract and analyze data from ERP systems. Then, we basically put it in on-premise Power BI, and once we have the reports and visuals that we want, we publish it to different members of whoever has access to see the reports. Basically, we publish it to their Power BI in the Cloud.

How has it helped my organization?

For one client, it gives all sales reps across all geographic regions access to sales data, so they know who's purchasing what product in what part of the country, and that sort of thing. It shows them overtime when sales are high and low, as well as what types of customers are buying. We occasionally connect it to external data. We link it to some demographic data, such as population figures in different provinces in Canada, to see how sales are doing.

It is beneficial. It's one of the applications we use for a client's sales reps all over the country to get all kinds of sales data. It also benefits them. They can ask, "Why isn't this customer purchasing this specific product?" So they know which customers are genuine or who are purchasing and may try to push a different line with them. It provides a wealth of useful information to the salespeople.

What is most valuable?

It gives us, the ability to do a lot of analysis quickly, similar to ad hoc analysis. People want to know, for example, which customers are purchasing which products over what time period. It's very simple to make visuals for them. We create a matrix that resembles a spreadsheet and then link it to various graphic visuals, pie charts, and other types of charts. They also get a visual sense of what's going on. Those features are fantastic.

What needs improvement?

One of the more difficult things to do is to export some of the data from Power BI to Excel. It is getting better. It's better than it was six, eight, or nine months ago, but it's still not quite there. They could probably improve that a little bit. 

The only disadvantage of how we're using it is that it can be difficult to get the data into Excel at times. A lot of users are very familiar with Excel, so having a seamless interface into Excel would be a big plus for a lot of people, in my opinion. Otherwise, it's an excellent product.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been selling Microsoft BI for two years.

I am using the most recent version.

It can be deployed both on the cloud and on-premises.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

For us, the stability has been great. We have no issues with the stability of Microsoft BI.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I believe it is a scalable product. I'm aware that they have other products on the market, but I haven't tried them. To analyze data, it appears to be scalable to fairly large businesses. Scalability is quite good.

It is not a single organization. It's amongst a few clients of mine. I would estimate the number of users to be about 20, 25, or something along those lines. Their roles vary a lot. Several users are salespeople and people in purchasing. There are also people in management who use it and people in the accounting area as well. There are also one or two more technical users who use it to export data to Excel PivotTables. These are the people who make use of it.

For one client, it's very extensively used. Others, I wouldn't say that it is used as extensively. They could use it a lot more.

How are customer service and support?

I have not had any interaction with technical support.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Before using Power BI, we used a lot of Excel, Power Pivot, and other similar tools. We transitioned a lot of our data models from Excel and Power Pivot to Power BI, including the PivotTables. It was a Microsoft solution. It was Excel, from Excel and Power Pivot to Power BI.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup went quite well. It was a fairly straightforward process. There were no major hiccups.

It took approximately four to five hours to configure.

I have one client who has an administrator who updates the system. He updates the product and his data on a regular basis. I believe the data must be updated once a month. Other clients' updates are handled by me.

What about the implementation team?

We did not need assistance, we completed it in-house.

What was our ROI?

Yes, I believe so. I haven't actually measured it, but based on one particular client, I believe their company is expanding at a rapid pace. I believe a large portion of it is or a good deal of it is based on the information they receive. I believe there will be a return.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

It's straightforward licensing. I would guess we pay $300 to $400 per month for everyone or something along those lines.

What other advice do I have?

Depending on where they're coming from, one thing is that if you want to get deeply involved in it, you have to learn the programming language, which I believe is DAX. It is not difficult to become involved in and learn. Microsoft, in my opinion, has done a good job of making it simple. That's one area I believe people should look into if they want to learn more than just the fundamentals of the DAX programming language. Which we have done in part. Again, we are not experts, but we have looked into it.

I would rate Microsoft BI a nine out of ten. It does almost everything we require.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Microsoft Azure
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:
PeerSpot user
reviewer1638714 - PeerSpot reviewer
Junior Data Scientist at a university with 5,001-10,000 employees
Real User
Good transforming of data for visualization, useful, stable, and scalable
Pros and Cons
  • "It is quite easy to use and it helps me to achieve the projects that I've been assigned."
  • "I feel the modeling page should be simplified."

What is our primary use case?

We use Microsoft BI typically to clean up data in Excel, as well as to create reports for my supervisor that will be analyzed and then used to draw conclusions.

How has it helped my organization?

It provides the common ground for data to be cleaned. We use this for everyone to work on cleaning up data in order to use it for visualizations, which has been helpful.

What is most valuable?

The transforming data before you start with the visualization comes in pretty handy.

It is quite easy to use and it helps me to achieve the projects that I've been assigned.

I have never had the inability to perform the tasks I've been assigned with the software. 

It's very useful because you can create helpful reports, which assist you to analyze data in a very organized way.

What needs improvement?

I feel the modeling page should be simplified. The links between different parts of your data, on the models' page, are a bit confusing. It was difficult for me to learn. 

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Microsoft BI for three months.

We are using an older version specific to the organization.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Microsoft BI is a stable product.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Microsoft BI is quite scalable, especially with the number of coding languages that are available to use.

We have approximately 23 data scientists in our organization who are using this solution. We use it extensively.

We are mostly using Microsoft BI but we are trying to bring in Tableau and maximize the potential of both.

How are customer service and technical support?

I have not contacted technical support.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I also have experience with Tableau.

How was the initial setup?

When I arrived, this solution was already set up.

What other advice do I have?

For others who want to start using Microsoft BI, I would say go through some tutorials on your own first and then try and practice with practice data sets that are available online. Also, feel free to play around with the different tools, and the different visualizations, because you can use them differently for different things.

I would rate Microsoft BI a nine out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
reviewer1477869 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Consultant at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees
Vendor
Good user interface, good technical support, and has the ability to scale
Pros and Cons
  • "The solution's initial setup isn't too complicated."
  • "The integration with other solutions could be improved for reporting aspects."

What is our primary use case?

We have a few projects. We're using the solution primarily to develop a modern sitemap.

What is most valuable?

The product has a very defined, well-prescribed format to it. It's easy for everyone to use for the most part.

The training is pretty good. It's well-described so that users can navigate the solution easily and follow the correct steps to initiate tasks effectively.

The user interface is pretty good.

The technical support on offer is excellent.

We've found the scalability to be quite good.

The solution's initial setup isn't too complicated.

What needs improvement?

I need more time with the solution. Right now, I can't think of any features that are missing from the product.

The integration with other solutions could be improved for reporting aspects. There are some reporting features in Tableau that we need access to and it would be ideal if there was a function between the two for data integration and data manipulation, with the final representation of the report available on Tableau.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using the solution for a year or more at this point. It hasn't been too long.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

So far, the solution has been largely stable. However, I'm still exploring the solution and testing it against my requirements. The stability hasn't quite been proven fully just yet.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The solution is pretty scalable. It meets all of my client's requirements. I'm able to make changes and expand if I need to. It's pretty simple to scale it out as necessary.

We deal, for the most part, with medium-sized companies. We don't really deal with smaller organizations or bigger enterprises.

How are customer service and technical support?

I'm extremely satisfied with technical support. It's been excellent so far. They are responsive and knowledgeable and I always get my questions answered in a timely manner. I have no complaints about their level of service.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I've also worked with Tableau and SAP products. We use them all currently.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is not complex in any way. It's quite straightforward. It was installed quite easily onto our system. We didn't run into any issues in that sense.

What other advice do I have?

I'm using the calculator version of the solution.

We use both the cloud and on-premises deployment models.

We are Microsoft partners. We're not just users.

Overall, I would recommend the solution. We do have other plans to use other BI solutions, however, we haven't really focused on that just yet. So far, this product has met our needs pretty well.

On a scale from one to ten, I'd rate the solution at a nine. We've largely been happy with the product and its offering.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: partner
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Microsoft Power BI Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
Updated: March 2025
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Microsoft Power BI Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.