Power BI: Best data visualization tool if you are a Microsoft user!
May 21, 2018
Power BI: Best data visualization tool if you are a Microsoft user!
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Microsoft Power BI
I was the president of an MBA Analytics Class, and Power BI was our main tool for data visualization. We chose this tool because it is the cheapest one to purchase for professional purposes. We know that sometimes organizations don't want to spend money buying new software, so we decided to go with Power BI since it is cheap and easy to getting approval for purchase within any organization. The idea behind the class and the use of Power BI is to learn how to find data insights, help students become more data-driven, and better use data to support recommendations.
- Price: The biggest advantage of Power BI is its price. All other data visualization tools can cost thousands of dollars per year, but Power BI would cost way less than $100/month. Most companies have Power BI in their agreement with Microsoft, so it might be even free for most of you.
- It's a Microsoft tool: Well, all of us are used to Microsoft Excel, right? So, the learning curve to use Power BI is not steep since we are all used to how Microsoft organizes their software, especially compared to other tools such as Tableau.
- Powerful cloud: Running a lot of data can be an expensive task for many computers. Since Power BI is cloud-based, all the processing power is done on powerful servers, so you can run complicated graphs and tool will handle super well and fast!
- Add-ins: Power BI has a good stand library of standard features. However, if you need more advanced graphs, such as heat maps, correlation charts, and Sankey charts, they are all available for free.
- Connectivity with non-Microsoft tools: Power BI is great to integrate with other MS tools, but if you want to connect it with statistical or machine learning tools (R, Python, Mathlab, JMP, etc.) you might get in trouble. Tableau, for example, has an easy integration with R and Python.
- Not all features are available in the online version: If you want to use more advanced features, you will probably need to download the desktop version of Power BI.
- No desktop version for Mac: So, I use a Mac and I needed to use some extra features on Power BI. When I tried to download the more complete desktop version, I realized that there's no desktop version of Power BI for Mac! I had to borrow a PC from a colleague to run the analysis I wanted.
Power BI is usually the cheapest solution and most user-friendly for most people (since we are all used to the Microsoft Suite). However the connectivity to non-Microsoft soft tools (databases and data analysis tools) are somewhat limited, especially when compared to its biggest competitor: Tableau.