Power BI is a Powerful Tool
Updated June 18, 2021

Power BI is a Powerful Tool

Bryan Goodyear | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Software Version

Power BI Pro

Overall Satisfaction with Microsoft Power BI

Power BI is our visualization tool to make our data insightful and easy to digest. Power BI is nice because it builds on your Microsoft Suite of applications and is easy to use. Power BI helps create standard views for high-level insights, with the capability to drill down. A drill-down capability is a powerful tool for actionable insights.

Pros

  • Actionable insights
  • Subscriptions for scheduled reports to your email.
  • Easy to use with different types of data sources.

Cons

  • Manipulating standard views can be more challenging for less experienced users.
  • Efficiency in preparing and presenting data.
  • Automated reports.
  • Ability to act faster in response to business data.
The primary other visualization tool I think of is Tableau. Tableau is fine and both options are usable as long as the underlying data architecture is good. I still prefer Power BI because I think it works better with the other Microsoft Applications and I find it cleaner to use.

Do you think Microsoft Power BI delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Microsoft Power BI's feature set?

Yes

Did Microsoft Power BI live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Microsoft Power BI go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Microsoft Power BI again?

Yes

I give Power BI an 8 out of 10 because it is very intuitive and flexible. It gets the job done while complimenting the rest of your applications. I wish some of the subscription capabilities were more dynamic as one example of the desired enhancement, but I'm confident in the future development of additional features. Also, since it's a Microsoft product, you can bet on the security and ongoing supportability of the product.
Supportability is extremely important. I personally haven't had a major issue requiring Microsoft intervention, which is probably the best support possible, but I'm also confident that Microsoft will continue to grow the Power BI capabilities and will have robust support when compared to smaller more boutique products on the market.
Since Power BI is a data visualization tool, it's useful anywhere a standard report or visualization is required. I like to use Power BI, especially where you want to avoid inconsistent manipulation of data to produce insights. Taking this process out of the analysts' hands ensures data consistency and avoids the question of whether data can be reliably used. It keeps one source of truth.

Microsoft Power BI Feature Ratings

BI Platform ()
Not Rated
Supported Data Sources ()
Not Rated
7.3
Pixel Perfect reports
7
Customizable dashboards
8
Report Formatting Templates
7
9.0
Drill-down analysis
9
Formatting capabilities
8
Integration with R or other statistical packages
10
Report sharing and collaboration
9
7.5
Publish to Web
Not Rated
Publish to PDF
6
Report Versioning
Not Rated
Report Delivery Scheduling
9
Delivery to Remote Servers
Not Rated
6.5
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)
7
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization
6
Predictive Analytics
Not Rated
10.0
Multi-User Support (named login)
10
Role-Based Security Model
Not Rated
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)
10
Single Sign-On (SSO)
10
Not Rated
Responsive Design for Web Access
Not Rated
Mobile Application
Not Rated
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile
Not Rated
Not Rated
REST API
Not Rated
Javascript API
Not Rated
iFrames
Not Rated
Java API
Not Rated
Themeable User Interface (UI)
Not Rated
Customizable Platform (Open Source)
Not Rated

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