Item: Power BI For Office 365 (discontinued)
Rating: 7
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We are using Power BI to create better visual representations for both internal use as well as customer facing analysis. It's not adopted across the entire organization yet but we are in the process of doing so.

Pros and Cons

Ease of data import
Easy to learn the basic operation of the software

Like many Microsoft products, you can get by with a small understanding of the product, but to truly realize the entire potential does take a while to learn.
Hooking up SQL databases to the cloud version is a more complex than just querying right into the database from the desktop version.

Return on Investment

It's allowed us to better visualize large amounts of data.
It's an easy way to tie into an existing SQL database for users that don't know SQL.

Alternatives Considered

Tableau

Much less expensive, particularly if your already an Office 365 customer.

Other Software Used

Skype for Business, Microsoft SQL Server, Fonality

Likelihood to Recommend

We frequently use the mapping feature to overlay areas in which we have strong operations and areas in which our customers have needs to quickly visualize opportunities to new and existing clients. We are also beginning to develop internal scorecards with it. One downside is we haven't discovered a way to automate a data refresh from the SQL connection, so you have to remember to refresh the data (which can take a little while depending on how much data your looking for) every time.

Power BI - Worth the O365 Upgrade

Overall Satisfaction with Power BI For Office 365