Microsoft Power BI was the best choice for our organization
April 24, 2019

Microsoft Power BI was the best choice for our organization

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Microsoft Power BI

Our organization uses Power BI across the organization and globally to our network of partners. Several problems were addressed by implementing Power BI.
  1. Report building: Reports can now be built by anyone in the organization with access to the data source where previously it required a developer.
  2. Time required: Along the same lines, the time required to release a new report or update an existing report has decreased significantly and can usually be done the same day.
  3. Embedding: Reports needed to be embedded in our partner portal and allow filtering based on the user so that we're showing the right data to the right people.
  4. One-off reports: There used to be an alarming number of requests for one time or monthly or weekly reports that were manually generated. The data is now accessible via Power BI in a controlled way that allows our users to find their own insights in the data.
  • Easy to build the reports you need. Allows users with any level of experience to start building reports.
  • Users can interact with reports in a natural way allowing them to start using the reports with no/little training or guidance.
  • Powerful enough to handle any report from any data source and size.
  • Secure handling of data and able to ensure the right data is visible to the right people.
  • Large community of users and resources.
  • Greater flexibility in formatting the look and feel or reports and dashboards.
  • Embedding Dashboards the way reports can be embedded.
We selected Microsoft Power BI because it was the easiest to integrate with our primary systems, allowed us to embed reports for our partners, allowed us to host our data and some reports on premise. It also provided the shortest route to production deployment allowing us to replace existing reporting in less than 2 months. We were also comfortable with how our data was being handled. Being part of the Microsoft stack also made the choice somewhat easier because of the familiarity but was not mandatory for us when making the decision.
Power BI is the best / easiest option when:
  1. You want to be able to leverage non-development staff to author reports
  2. You need to be able to embed your reports
  3. You need security around the data you are presenting
  4. You need to be able to access a wide variety of data sources
  5. You want to have access to a large online community for support/learning
Microsoft Power BI may not be the best choice if you have a limited dataset, few reports you are interested in, don't require much functionality in the report, and don't have resources familiar with Power BI.

Microsoft Power BI Feature Ratings

Pixel Perfect reports
9
Customizable dashboards
7
Report Formatting Templates
Not Rated
Drill-down analysis
8
Formatting capabilities
7
Integration with R or other statistical packages
10
Report sharing and collaboration
9
Publish to Web
9
Publish to PDF
Not Rated
Report Versioning
9
Report Delivery Scheduling
Not Rated
Delivery to Remote Servers
Not Rated
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)
10
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization
8
Predictive Analytics
9
Multi-User Support (named login)
10
Role-Based Security Model
10
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)
10
Single Sign-On (SSO)
10
Responsive Design for Web Access
10
Mobile Application
10
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile
9
REST API
10
Javascript API
10
iFrames
10
Java API
Not Rated
Themeable User Interface (UI)
10
Customizable Platform (Open Source)
Not Rated