Microsoft Power BI vs. Power BI For Office 365 (discontinued)

Has significantly improved collation of data and visualisation especially with business across Europe. Has given me the ability to see the Site availability at the click of a button to see which Site is in the "money" and seize opportunities based on Market data

Incentivized

If you're already using Office 365, Power BI for O365 is an easy choice. Start playing around with the free version and then easily add individual Pro licenses with little risk. However, if you anticipate using this with many users, it can get expensive quickly.

Incentivized

• Options for data source connections are immense. Not just which sources, but your options for *how* the data is brought in.
• Constant updates (this is both good and bad at times).
• User friendliness. I can get the data connections set up and draft some quick visuals, then release to the target audience and let them expand on it how they want to.

Incentivized

• Easy to make visual dashboards from SQL queries. Previously we had to use a third party application that had to run on a web server that was so complex to setup and run. PowerBI removes all that.
• Ability to control who/which group has access to each dashboard or report. Ties in well with the rest of the Office 365 ecosystem.
• Has many connectors to allow pulling data from various systems, both onsite (via gateway) or external (via APIs), and join the data to create a report/dashboard.
• Ability to show data but also export the data, if permitted.
• Easy to show PowerBI dashboards on SharePoint or on other websites via embedded code.

Incentivized

• It would be easier for users could Microsoft Power BI and Excel used the same programming languages.
• Would like to see the online version of Microsoft Power BI be as powerful as the desktop version.
• Publishing a Microsoft Power BI file online and then having to save the file is somewhat redundant.
• Would like to export each page or chart as an image.

Incentivized

• Licensing: Currently, Microsoft has a fixed pricing model for Office 365 users, regardless of role/function of the user. Most organizations have a small number of "power users" that create usable content and many more "consumers" that simply view/run reports created by power users. Microsoft does not differentiate between these users, and thus the pricing limits organizations from large deployments of the software.
• Version incompatibility: Excel 2010 and 2013 workbooks are compatible with each other. However, workbooks created in 2010 that include PowerPivot databases must be upgraded to 2013 format to run in 2013. Subsequently, you cannot open these upgraded PowerPivot workbooks in 2010. This requires ALL users to be on the same version.
• Visualization: Excel charting with PowerPivot workbooks is adequate for many users. Power View also contains a number of GREAT visualizations, including animated bubble charts and a very flexible dashboard/report design canvas. However, compared to some of the other self-service BI solutions, it is still limited in its visualization capabilities.

Microsoft Power BI is an excellent and scalable tool. It has a learning curve, but once you get past that, the sky is the limit and you can build from the most simple to the most complex dashboards. I have built everything from simple reports with only a few data points to complex reports with many pages and advanced filtering.

I will continue to recommend this suite to folks looking for a reporting and analytics solution, as I find in MOST cases, it's great at meeting almost every requirement I've been given by a multitude of clients across a range of industries. I've built Capacity Planning solutions that allowed end user input which was then submitted to SharePoint, Executive Dashboards, custom applications, simple analytical tools for teams to easily slice and dice data, and super simple reports as well as some very complicated ones. If you haven't seen the demos online, do a search, and see for yourself - this is a great BI suite! (I do not work for Microsoft, although I do consult out there from time to time. I do occasionally make a recommendation for a different BI reporting tool, but in general, find Excel can accomplish quite a bit for less money and in less time.)

Automating reporting has reduced manual data processing by 50-70%, freeing up analysts for higher-value tasks. A finance team that previously spent 20+ hours per week on Excel-based reports now does it in minutes with Microsoft Power BI's automated Real-time dashboards have shortened decision cycles by 30-40%, enabling leadership to react quickly to sales trends, operational bottlenecks, and customer behavior.

Incentivized

We are satisfied with the functionality and capabilities of Power BI. Product is cost effective and full-fill the reporting requirements of the organization. You can perform most of the report level complex analysis with the help of DAX which makes Power BI very powerful analytic tool. Power BI for Office 365 has gone away and Power BI is the next evolution of it. Power BI comes with your Office 365 E5 subscription or you can purchase licensing for it separately.

Incentivized

It is a fantastic tool, you can do almost everything related with data and reports, it is a perfect substitutive of Power Point and Excel with a high evolution and flexibility, and also it is very friendly and easy to share. I think all companies should have Power BI (or other BI tool) in their software package and if they are in the MS Suite, for sure Power BI should be the one due to all the benefits of the MS ecosystem.

Incentivized

as of now there is strong community for Power BI, you can get solution for most of your problems from there. Also you can send your error to Microsoft as well. After every 15 days they release updates to overcome all the issues of defects.

Incentivized

It was integrated with our erp easily and was accessible on cloud.

Incentivized

Microsoft Power BI is free. If I didn't want to create a custom platform (i.e. my organization insisted on an existing platform that I *had* to use), I'd use Microsoft Power BI. For any start-up or SMB, I'd just use Claude & Grok to build it quickly, also for free. Would not pay for Tableau or Sigma anymore. Not worth it at all.

Incentivized

Oracle was nice, super expensive to implement if it's not in use already. JobDiva is choppy and heavy on the system while does not give great reports. Salesforce is good; remote access is good however their support is terrible

Incentivized

• Power BI usage reduced the effort of analytical reports creation by about 80%
• Empowered all the level of employee to be more vigilant of the data and business insights, gained the profit of 8% overall.
• AI-powered predictive analytics improved forecasting accuracy by 17%, that topped the overall sales.

Incentivized

• As a Microsoft Partner implementing Business Intelligence solutions, Power BI has removed the barrier for our clients to begin the "BI journey". So often, projects get hung up in that early phase of procuring and installing/configuring expensive hardware and software. Just simply getting started and designing a beginning solution has allowed our clients to see results in 1-2 weeks using their data that might have taken months to achieve otherwise.
• One significant ROI example is process improvement. In many cases, individuals or teams are spending days each month gathering data from multiple sources for reporting to their constituents. We are reducing these times to minutes by automating many of the data collection and integration processes that were previously manual.