Item: Microsoft Power BI
Rating: 9
Author: Greg Watkins

Overall Satisfaction with Microsoft Power BI

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We are using PowerBI across our organization for sales, CSM's, as well as our finance leadership and product teams. Our entire company receives value from it, since we use it for revenue forecasting, understanding our customers' adoption and journeys. We also use it to review different data as it pertains to the customers' invoice processing and other valuable KPI [metrics]. We use data from it from the CSM team to create QBR business review decks which are very impactful.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Very quick and easy to filter down and look [at] granular sets of data.
Easy to switch between various tabs for quick ad-hoc reporting.
Easy to read and analyze the charts that we set up.
Real time, or near real time data, which allows us to make actionable insights easier.

Cons

Since it's a complex system, need a technical team or administrator to manage.
I don't like being locked out. Make it easier to stay log[ged] in and not fill in password.
SSO login would be huge! This would save a lot of time and improve security.

Return on Investment

Improved customer retention, since we can see when revenue drops off, and immediately be alerted of this change.
Better QBR/Customer conversations since we can drill down and have data at our fingertips
Improved customer journey and milestone analysis - that way we see all of the areas of the product that the customer is using or not.

Alternatives Considered

Unfortunately, I was not part of the decision making process so I can't speak for what we were searching on before we made the decision to purchase. I will say that we have new team members who came from SAP, selling their SAP analytics product which is a direct competitor to PowerBI, They have said that it's light-years ahead in terms of speed and flexibility and by far a better product.

Key Insights

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

Not sure

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

Yes

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

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of Microsoft Power BI go as expected?

I wasn't involved with the implementation phase

Would you buy Microsoft Power BI again?

Yes

Usability

As a company and as an organization, we are very pleased with the system and tool as a whole. In total I believe we have about 50 or so users across multiple departments (1/10 of our organization size). Because of the variety of use cases that the system can support across different team[s], it has become a very powerful tool as part of our arsenal. As a CSM here, I am using the tool almost daily for deeper and further insights and analysis on my customer portfolio.

Support Rating

I can't really speak to the support overall, [but] I will say that in the almost three years I have used the system, I have only needed to contact their support team once. I think the team was helpful, but it did take some time for us to resolve the issues/ request that they had. I guess the good news is that the system is pretty stable, and I personally have rarely needed to contact their technical support team.

Likelihood to Recommend

For us, any type of revenue reporting, and being able to ingest different data sources like SFDC and ChurnZero, and even data from our own internal platform is huge. The flexibility allows you to really get a good grip on the business. For Finance or CSM teams, I can see a lot of value, depending on how you are attempting to measure the business. From an end user, since the platform is so quick, it allows me to free up time, so I can spend on other strategic areas of my day to day.

Microsoft Power BI Feature Ratings

Comments

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Improved financial and customer data at scale across the entire organization!

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