Search
Close this search box.
Customer Satisfaction
6.0/10
6.0
User Experience
5.3/10
5.3
Functionality
6.1/10
6.1
Business Value
5.5/10
5.5

Microsoft Power BI

What is Microsoft Power BI?

Cloud-based and business user-oriented BI solution for creating dashboards, analyses and reports. Paginated reports available for print-oriented reporting. Also part of Microsoft Fabric.

BI, Analytics & CPM
●● Reporting / Dashboards
●● Analysis
● Advanced Analytics
– Planning
– Financial Consolidation

= Function covered, ●● = Functional focus

= Function covered
●●
= Functional focus

About Microsoft Power BI

Self-description of the vendor

No vendor self-description available

Microsoft Power BI BARC Review & Rating

Provider and product description

Microsoft, the world’s largest software company, was founded in 1975 and has become a household name primarily due to its Windows operating system and Office suite. With its offerings, Microsoft wants to contribute to a modern workspace for its customers, whether they are private individuals or large enterprises. The vendor has a broad enterprise offering, ranging from cloud (Azure) to database to its ERP products.

Microsoft was among the first vendors to focus on providing cloud-based solutions for analytics, a path later followed by several competitors. Azure is used by numerous companies as a cloud computing platform and for storing substantial amounts of data, putting Microsoft in a good position to offer integrated analytics front ends. Indeed, the vendor has not only integrated Power BI, its core BI & analytics platform, with many Azure Services and Microsoft products but has also included it in various product packages. One of the most recent is Microsoft Fabric, designed as an integrated end-to-end data and analytics platform delivered as software as a service (SaaS). The package contains several Azure services such as Power BI, Azure Synapse Analytics, Azure Data Factory and many more. The core value proposition and advantage for customers is that the already stitched together services facilitate the building up of a SaaS environment consisting of data and analytics services. One of the additional benefits is the obligatory Data Lake ‘OneLake’, which is automatically connected with all other Fabric services and can be used by customers without extra configuration.

Power BI itself is a cloud-based analytics product consisting of Power BI Desktop (a full client for data preparation, dashboards and analysis) and Power BI Service (a web application for content publishing and sharing). It is an interactive tool for data visualization geared at enabling business users to analyze data and share insights, predominantly via dashboards.

Data visualization in Power BI delivers rich visualizations but is limited in flexibility by its dashboard-oriented approach. NLQ makes it easy for users to retrieve relevant visualizations. Guided analytics is mostly covered by ‘Quick Insights’, a feature that automatically analyzes data sets for patterns and outliers and provides the user with suggestions about relevant findings. The ‘Insight’ feature can be used to receive information about interesting patterns in the data a specific visualization is based on. For advanced requirements, AutoML features are integrated into Power BI dataflows. Recently, Microsoft introduced its AI-based service Copilot for Power BI. The product is designed to support dashboard and visual creation, and the writing of narratives and DAX queries.

Microsoft has also incorporated formatted reporting functionality from its on-premises product set Reporting Services as Paginated Reports into Power BI to provide a broader feature set and integrate analytics capabilities. Power BI Report Server delivers a subset of Power BI features to on-premises customers, mostly to facilitate their migration to the cloud.

Power BI content can also be integrated into Microsoft PowerPoint to provide better data storytelling capabilities as well as to increase the use of insights gained in Power BI for a larger number of users.

Strengths and challenges of Microsoft Power BI

BARC’s viewpoint on the product’s strengths and challenges.

Strengths
  • Power BI, the business-user-oriented dashboard and self-service analytics solution, is attractively priced, which makes it easy for organizations and individual users to get started with it.
  • Dashboards are easy to build for business users and can either display governed data or leverage additional data through powerful data preparation.
  • ‘Quick Insights’ and NLQ guide users when exploring new data sets with auto insights while data preparation offers ML-based productivity features too. The AI-based assistant Copilot facilitates the creation of dashboards and DAX expressions to speed up the development of content.
  • Governance, shared data access and assets for Enterprise BI needs through tight integration with Azure Services and offerings such as Microsoft Fabric.
Challenges
  • Formatted (paginated) reports enhance the reach of Power BI, but building these reports is still a developer’s task rather than one for typical business users.
  • Different clients with varying functionality in place: Besides the two possible clients for creating paginated reports, Power BI consists of a desktop and a web client.
  • Power BI and additional services are available on the Azure infrastructure only.
Need more help finding the right software?

Find out how our expertise can help you.

Microsoft Power BI User Reviews & Experiences

The information contained in this section is based on user feedback and actual experience with Microsoft Power BI.

The information and figures are largely drawn from BARC’s The BI & Analytics Survey, The Planning Survey, The Financial Consolidation Survey and The Data Management Survey. You can find out more about these surveys by clicking on the relevant links.

Who uses Microsoft Power BI in a BI & analytics context and how

Why users buy Microsoft Power BI and what problems they have using it

Premium content. Unlock with BARC+.
For just €79 per month (€948 per year) you can access all the paid content on www.barc.com.
Your benefits:

Full user reviews and KPI results for Microsoft Power BI

All key figures for Microsoft Power BI at a glance.

Premium content. Unlock with BARC+.
For just €79 per month (€948 per year) you can access all the paid content on www.barc.com.
Your benefits:

Individual user reviews for Microsoft Power BI

Role
Analyst
Number of employees
More than 2.500
Industry
Public sector
Source
BARC Panel, The BI & Analytics Survey 25, 03/2024
What do you like best?

La puissance, la facilité d'utilisation et la stabilité.

What do you like least/what could be improved?

Pour l'instant, je n'ai rien qui me déplait.

What key advice would you give to other companies looking to introduce/use the product?

Prévoir, dépendant de l'entreprise, 6 à 9 mois d'analyse, afin de sélectionner la bonne solution.

How would you sum up your experience?

Excellente opinion.

Role
Head of a separate BI/analytics organization unit
Number of employees
100 - 2.500
Industry
Utilities
Source
BARC Panel, The BI & Analytics Survey 25, 04/2024
What do you like best?

Its simple! Is integrated to a lot of other tools familiar in business departments.

What do you like least/what could be improved?

Difficult to understand the functionally (f.ex. Embedded BI).

What key advice would you give to other companies looking to introduce/use the product?

Make sure your team has time to build knowledge on the tool first (before business).

How would you sum up your experience?

Very good.

Role
Project manager for BI/analytics from IT
Number of employees
More than 2.500
Industry
Manufacturing
Source
BARC Panel, The BI & Analytics Survey 25, 03/2024
What do you like best?

Flexibility and ease of use.

What do you like least/what could be improved?

Metadata, governance and maintenance of complex data transformations.

What key advice would you give to other companies looking to introduce/use the product?

Plan for the implementation, and include security model and governance into the report building process.

How would you sum up your experience?

Great tool, extreme levels of flexibility, but lacks detailed guidance from the vendor for successful implementation.

Role
Finance Decision Support Manager
Number of employees
More than 2.500
Industry
Process industry
Source
BARC Panel, The BI & Analytics Survey 25, 05/2024
What do you like best?

Connecter à l'ensemble des solutions Microsoft (Power Apps, Copilot)

What do you like least/what could be improved?

-

What key advice would you give to other companies looking to introduce/use the product?

Dans ma société, Power BI desktop peut être téléchargé par tous les employés (accès libre) et tous les employés peuvent créer leur propre rapport Power BI ce qui conduit à une profusion de rapports. L'adoption a été massive et à permis au employés de se former / s'autoformer. en négative, il a été difficile de mettre après coup une structure de gouvernance des rapports car n'importe qui peut créer un rapport Power BI. Aujourd'hui Power BI est vu comme un complément de la suite Office. en accès libre.

How would you sum up your experience?

Très bonne.

Role
Consultant
Number of employees
More than 2.500
Industry
Process industry
Source
BARC Panel, The BI & Analytics Survey 25, 03/2024
What do you like best?

Data source connectivity and autologging of the data preparation process is fantastic.

What do you like least/what could be improved?

Certain industrial-wide standard visualizations.

What key advice would you give to other companies looking to introduce/use the product?

Though it is a No/Low Code application, real world requirements will need a decent amount of coding knowledge and ML know-how.

How would you sum up your experience?

Easy to use, hard to master.

Role
Head of a separate BI/analytics organization unit
Number of employees
100 - 2.500
Industry
Media/Publishing
Source
BARC Marketing, The BI & Analytics Survey 25, 06/2024
What do you like best?

Einfachheit und Übersichtlichkeit, Schnittstellen und leichte Integration mit anderen Tools.

What do you like least/what could be improved?

Export und automatischer Versand von Berichten.

What key advice would you give to other companies looking to introduce/use the product?

Es macht Sinn, am Anfang Sinn externe Partner für Onboarding und Schulungen zu beauftragen.

How would you sum up your experience?

Durchweg positiv.

Role
IT employee
Number of employees
100 - 2.500
Industry
Banking and finance
Source
BARC Marketing, The BI & Analytics Survey 25, 05/2024
What do you like best?

A quick start. You'll be able to get insights quickly with an uncomplicated setup, no required training, and included dashboards for services such as Salesforce, Google Analytics, and Microsoft Dynamics.

What do you like least/what could be improved?

Unintuitive user interface.

What key advice would you give to other companies looking to introduce/use the product?

Know the end users and their requirements well.

How would you sum up your experience?

Microsoft Power BI is a reliable BI solution, especially if you are the right user for this software.

Role
Project manager for BI/analytics from IT
Number of employees
More than 2.500
Industry
Process industry
Source
BARC Marketing, The BI & Analytics Survey 25, 05/2024
What do you like best?

Jeder kann damit starten, Zusammenarbeit, Microsoft 365 Integration.

What do you like least/what could be improved?

Am Dienstleister-Markt für Power BI Berater und Entwickler tummeln sich viele Anbieter mit mangelhaften Kenntnissen - anspruchsvollere und evtl. unabhängige Zertifizierungen könnten das Problem lösen.

What key advice would you give to other companies looking to introduce/use the product?

Teure Berater, die ihr Geld wert sind, lohnen sich. Billige Berater führen nicht zu billigen Projekten.

How would you sum up your experience?

Je mehr wir dazu lernen, desto besser können wir Power BI nutzen. Die Flexibilität ist großartig und Anforderungen scheitern in der Regel nicht an den Möglichkeiten, sondern höchstens an den Kenntnissen. Power BI ist keine Lösung für ein BI-System, das man einmal hinstellt und dann ist das Projekt abgeschlossen. Es ist für Unternehmen, die sich und ihre Datenplattform ständig weiterentwickeln wollen. Es ist ganz klar kein Tool für den Planungsprozess, mit Eingaben, zumindest nicht ohne Erweiterungen.

Role
Employee of a cross-departmental BI/analytics team
Number of employees
100 - 2.500
Industry
Manufacturing
Source
BARC Marketing, The BI & Analytics Survey 25, 05/2024
What do you like best?

Microsoft steckt viel Energie in die Weiterentwicklung.

What do you like least/what could be improved?

-

What key advice would you give to other companies looking to introduce/use the product?

Wenn die Einführung durch das Unternehmen selbst erfolgen soll: ein solides Wissensfundament schaffen.

How would you sum up your experience?

Hervorragend.

Role
CEO
Number of employees
Less than 100
Industry
Consulting
Source
BARC Marketing, The BI & Analytics Survey 25, 05/2024
What do you like best?

Vielseitigkeit der Einsatzmöglichkeiten.

What do you like least/what could be improved?

Mangelender Support. Mehrsprachigkeit.

What key advice would you give to other companies looking to introduce/use the product?

Unterschätzen Sie den Ausbildungsbedarf (DAX, Power Query, …) nicht.

How would you sum up your experience?

Umfangreiche, zweckmässige BI-Lösung.

Role
Data team lead
Number of employees
More than 2.500
Industry
Media/Publishing
Source
Invited by the vendor, The BI & Analytics Survey 25, 05/2024
What do you like best?

Simple UI for data consumers.

What do you like least/what could be improved?

Data modelling is limited. Abilities for enterpise level data modeling are weak. Renaming fields in meta model creates loads of problems.

What key advice would you give to other companies looking to introduce/use the product?

Check what your needs are. More complex data modeling needs lots of work to be done.

How would you sum up your experience?

Report user input has been good.

Role
Project manager for BI/analytics from business department
Number of employees
More than 2.500
Industry
Banking and finance
Source
BARC Panel, The BI & Analytics Survey 25, 05/2024
What do you like best?

The business users seem to like it much better than our prior tool and they seem to find it easier to create things for themselves. I also like the overall strategy (power platform). I think the tool is very empowering for an end user.

What do you like least/what could be improved?

I don't feel it is easy to troubleshoot your report/dashboard results when users ask about why figures are what they are. It isn't easy to tell which field you should pull in when you are presented with a mixed bag of similar table and measure names, but this is not really the fault of the tool.

What key advice would you give to other companies looking to introduce/use the product?

Have some governance over the data models made available to the enterprise, so business users will find it less intimidating/easier to understand which things to pull into their dashboard. Document all the formulas or know how to look at them with ease. Know the various licensing options (users who build dashboards and publish them for others vs. those who just consume pre-built content).

How would you sum up your experience?

I personally still find it a bit cryptic in terms of knowing how a measure or dimension pulled onto your report will afect your result set. It seems to always use inner joins for everything and that may unwittingly to a business user cause certain things to fall out of their result. This is all in the data model design of course.

Role
Project manager for BI/analytics from IT
Number of employees
100 - 2.500
Industry
Banking and finance
Source
BARC Marketing, The BI & Analytics Survey 25, 04/2024
What do you like best?

Userfreundlichkeit, speziell Dax.

What do you like least/what could be improved?

Rückschreibemöglichkeit in die Datenbank.

What key advice would you give to other companies looking to introduce/use the product?

Unbedingt Governance implementieren bevor man das Tool in Masse verteilt.

How would you sum up your experience?

Tolles Tool, allerdings braucht es Spielregeln. Besonders in einem stark regulierten Umfeld (Finanzbereich).

Role
Consultant
Number of employees
100 - 2.500
Industry
Banking and finance
Source
BARC Panel, The BI & Analytics Survey 25, 05/2024
What do you like best?

Good simple interface. Easy to use. Good integration. Cloud fabric platform stable and reliable. Good support.

What do you like least/what could be improved?

Visual options limited and not very configurable.Dataflow performance is poor. Lack of version control.

What key advice would you give to other companies looking to introduce/use the product?

Easy to use tool, won't have many complaints from the business.

How would you sum up your experience?

Unless Microsoft continues to invest and expand functionality then Power BI will soon become outdated and will be overtaken and replaced by better tools.

Role
Project manager for BI/analytics from business department
Number of employees
More than 2.500
Industry
Education
Source
BARC Panel, The BI & Analytics Survey 25, 05/2024
What do you like best?

Integrated with Office 365 making it easy to deploy and for staff to access and consume content.

What do you like least/what could be improved?

Continual development of Power BI can impact developer experience as things can change alot. Also some annoying bugs that you would think would be simple to fix are still around.

What key advice would you give to other companies looking to introduce/use the product?

If you have Office 365 then it's a good tool to deploy as it integrates easily with the architecture and cost will probably be low.

How would you sum up your experience?

Very good BI tool that enables us to reach large audience with ease.

Role
CEO
Number of employees
Less than 100
Industry
IT
Source
BARC Panel, The BI & Analytics Survey 25, 03/2024
What do you like best?

Ease of use yet very powerful.

What do you like least/what could be improved?

Additional license fees when using CoPilot capabilities.

What key advice would you give to other companies looking to introduce/use the product?

Be sure you start your journey with enough knowledge of data-modelling.

How would you sum up your experience?

Excellent tool, very satisfied with it.

Role
Project manager for BI/analytics from IT
Number of employees
More than 2.500
Industry
Services
Source
BARC Panel, The BI & Analytics Survey 25, 05/2024
What do you like best?

It is an easy tool for final users. Good visualization tool.

What do you like least/what could be improved?

Comparing with Qlik product, PowerBI has not an ETL capability. We need an extra component to extract and transform data.

What key advice would you give to other companies looking to introduce/use the product?

It is a good visualization tool, but the process should be done before entering in Power BI.

How would you sum up your experience?

A good visualization tool.