Microsoft BI is a business intelligence product used for data analysis and generating reports on server-based data. It features unlimited data analysis capacity with its reporting engine, SQL Server Reporting Services alongside ETL, master data management, and data cleansing.
$14
per month per user
SharePoint
Score 7.6 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft's SharePoint is an Intranet solution that enables users to share and manage content, knowledge, and applications to empower teamwork, quickly find information, and collaborate across the organization.
$5
Per User Per Month
Yellowfin
Score 8.7 out of 10
Mid-Size Companies (51-1,000 employees)
Yellowfin is a cloud-based business intelligence and dashboarding platform.
$250
per month
Pricing
Microsoft BI (MSBI)
Microsoft SharePoint
Yellowfin
Editions & Modules
Power BI Pro
$14
per month per user
Power BI Premium
$24
per month per user
Plan 1
$5.00
Per User Per Month
Plan 2
$10.00
Per User Per Month
Office 365 E3
$20.00
Per User Per Month
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Microsoft BI (MSBI)
SharePoint
Yellowfin
Free Trial
No
Yes
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
Yes
No
Yes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
No
Yes
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
Optional
Additional Details
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More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Microsoft BI (MSBI)
Microsoft SharePoint
Yellowfin
Considered Multiple Products
Microsoft BI (MSBI)
Verified User
Employee
Chose Microsoft BI (MSBI)
Each of the solutions has their pros and cons, but Microsoft's BI offerings provide the best "bang for the buck." Few solutions available offer the breadth of feature functionality in a single package, with BI and database generally being sold as separate offerings. However, …
SQL server allows for a member of the database administrators team to assist the end users with queries designed to pull information out of the back end databases. With Microsoft BI the end users can be given connections that allow them to create their own queries, pull the …
Microsoft BI has a lot of features and is a very powerful tool, especially if you have folks on your team that know how to utilize all of its capabilities. To truly unlock all that it can do, it does require people to have a deep understanding of its capabilities. That's where the software really shines. If you are looking for a simpler, more basic reporting tool, there are other programs available that do not require such a steep learning curve.
SharePoint Document Management excels as a central repository for storing, organising, and retrieving documents. It supports version control, metadata tagging, secure access, and integration with tools like Power Automate. At our organisation, it's used for managing contracts, policies, and supplier documents. SharePoint Workflow Automation integrates with Power Automate to streamline approvals, gather feedback, and automate recurring tasks. This reduces reliance on email chains and manual trackers.
We can recommend this software without hesitation, as it has the ability to generate reports and data analysis, as well as process the data automatically, which saves time. It is ideal for small and medium-sized companies that wish to improve their services in the business world
Yellowfin’s Storyboard, Timeline and Collaborative tools make it easy to share data and insights across an organisation.
Strong Operational and Executive Dashboards that reflect the business KPIs and can send out prompts to people within the business based on rules.
Yellowfin makes it incredibly easy to create dynamic reports and dashboards which incorporate maps through locational intelligence functionality.
Yellowfin is a single license and all access is via a web browser making it perfect for both on-premise and cloud deployment. Mobile apps are also available.
User roles and source filtering allows Admin/IT to offer different functions/views by user group/role.
Mobile BI applications to support any device ..
API connectors ( YF 7.2 on the way in Mar16 ) for a range of third-party Web-based applications, data sources, Enterprises CRM/ERP apps & open data platform apps, including Salesforce, Google Analytics, Twitter, Youtube , Zoho CRM, XE.com & more coming to make endusers to integrate their applications for better benefits
Yellowfin Integration with Predictive analytical and Big Data processing tools like R, UDF, Spark to build rich applications for end users
Windows Explorer users have some difficulty having to constantly UPLOAD / DOWNLOAD files. Specifically on the DOWNLOAD when they are used to Drag & Drop in & out of LOCAL folders via Window's explorer.
Microsoft SharePoint supports multiple "library" types. When implementing our "image" library the search function is done via "tags" and boolean logic. This is challenging to most end users. I'd like our users to be able to search our Microsoft SharePoint image library without having to enter KEYWORD or other BOOLEAN logic.
Microsoft SharePoint can also be an internal website for each department or company wide communication tool but I believe these features are geared for much larger organizations. Since we are a SMB we really aren't using these features. So maybe something more useful to SMBs would be nice.
The ability to predefine a colour for a specific graph as a selection option dynamically.
The ability to customise the label of a chart, especially with respect to performance related reporting graphs we need an increase in dynamic charting options to meet our more specialised requirements.
Microsoft BI is fundamental to our suite of BI applications. That being said, Northcraft Analytics is focused on delighting our customers, so if the underlying factors of our decision change, we would choose to re-write our BI applications on a different stack. Luckily, mathematics are the fundamental IP of our technology... and is portable across all BI platforms for the foreseeable future.
It's integral to our business. It's already included with most of the Office 365 licensing we buy, so the cost is effectively zero. It stores our files, it is the foundation for custom applications, and Microsoft only continues to enhance its functionality and its connections to other Microsoft tools. SharePoint just keeps getting better and better.
The Microsoft BI tools have great usability for both developers and end users alike. For developers familiar with Visual Studio, there is little learning curve. For those not, the single Visual Studio IDE means not having to learn separate tools for each component. For end-users, the web interface for SSRS is simple to navigate with intuitive controls. For ad-hoc analysis, Excel can connect directly to SSAS and provide a pivot table like experience which is familiar to many users. For database development, there is beginning to be some confusion, as there are now three tool choices (VS, SSMS, Azure Data Studio) for developers. I would like to see Azure Data Studio become the superset of SSMS and eventually supplant it.
No usability issues reported. Individual teams also have allocated areas which replace legacy shared drives on local LANs. Access to Sharepoint resources is fully integrated with corporate Active Directory with additional two-factor authentication required for administrative users. Users have access to Microsoft Services Hub which allows you to create, manage, and track support requests while staying current on Microsoft technologies with access to select self-paced learning paths
As mentioned previously, if a newer company is looking for a strong, polished BI tool, Yellowfin would be a great software vendor to consider. Unfortunately, the high cost might be a barrier to these newer companies who dont have any legacy software/agreements such as an EA agreement with Microsoft.
SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) can drag at times. We created two report servers and placed them under an F5 load balancer. This configuration has worked well. We have seen sluggish performance at times due to the Windows Firewall.
MSBI natively has a site that allows you to vote on user enhancements and bug fixes. This allows the largest nagging issues to float to the top and the development team can prioritize accordingly. As mentioned earlier, the large community base of MSBI developers assist technical resources in handling technical questions.
They have good support in what they provide. But what they provide is not what is promised. I would stay with them if I can. Be very careful before signing up with them. They are not what they seem in the sales pitches. Be very careful and make sure you test and test before you sign up.
The face to face training I received was on SharePoint Administration. It was rushed as there was a lot of information to cover and the application of the labs weren't that great either. I like to be able to relate what I am learning to what I am currently doing.
I have used on-line training from Microsoft and from Pragmatic Works. I would recommend Pragmatic Works as the best way to get up to speed quickly, and then use the Microsoft on-line training to deep dive into specific features that you need to get depth with.
I like to learn at my own pace and online training allows for that. Additionally, you can skip through pieces of content that you already know or are already comfortable with. Microsoft actually offers great videos on their website for basic fundamental SharePoint Training. I have used these training videos in some of my own training sessions with end users.
We are a consulting firm and as such our best resources are always billing on client projects. Our internal implementation has weaknesses, but that's true for any company like ours. My rating is based on the product's ease of implementation.
We have used the built in ConnectWise Manager reports and custom reports. The reports provide static data. PowerBI shows us live data we can drill down into and easily adjust parameters. It's much more useful than a static PDF report.
The reasons for selecting MS SharePoint are: SharePoint provides ease of use and web design assistance and support SharePoint helps you schedule your content for publishing. enables users to share documents with external parties and offers a better internal structure of the content and better indexing and searching capabilities.
Yellow Fin platform is browser agnostic and is accessible from desktops as well as mobile devices. It is very simple and fast, it is integrated with Big Data, clients do not require a great training. It just works. But it’s easier to have things on the cloud, especially if you need to use different computers. Yellow Fin lacks the cloud feature.
As a SaaS provider we see being able to provide self-service BI to our client users as a competitive advantage. In fact the MSSQL enabled BI is a contributing factor to many winning RFPs we have done for prospective client organisations.
However MSSQL BI requires extensive knowledge and skills to design and develop data warehouses & data models as a foundation to support business analysts and users to interrogate data effectively and efficiently. Often times we find having strong in-house MSSQL expertise is a bless.