Likelihood to Recommend 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.
Read full review I have read reviews where Vizlib is performing well. That was not our experience integrating Vizlib with
Qlik Sense cloud as a write back capability. So, my experience is that integrating Vizlib with
Qlik Sense cloud as a write back capability is probably not an area where they perform well
Read full review Pros 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. Read full review Visualizations Forecasting Storytelling Read full review Cons 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. Read full review Vizlib promised a writeback capability that it just was not able to deliver. We bought additional developer licenses for QlikSense that were not planned in the initial Vizlib discussions, but even with they were not able to implement a writeback capability. I feel Support was horrible... very slow, and with inadequate expertise. Read full review Likelihood to Renew 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.)
Read full review Usability 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.
Read full review We have figured out how to use Vizlib features on our own on many occasions. Whenever we do run into questions, the support team is very helpful and able to help us figure out how to do things quickly. I feel features are more advanced, but we know the depth is there when we’re ready to use it
Read full review Support Rating 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.
Read full review Vizlib support is awesome! We have quick turnaround times and regular updates when we open cases. It’s so good we often ask them
Qlik Sense questions, rather than going to Qlik support
Read full review Alternatives Considered 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
Read full review I selected Vizlib based on several positive Qlik community forum comments. It would seem that they had a different use case than we did
Read full review Return on Investment 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. Read full review We have had a negative experience with Vizlib... we paid for a capability that wasn't delivered, and that cost us time that could have been better spend on other priorities. Negative ROI. Read full review ScreenShots