Microsoft Power BI Reviews

One of our primary use cases is to build an MSBA-based business intelligence solution for  collection agents, so that they can receive daily information relating to bills in the form of ledgers. I've built several packages to import the data from where it has been dumped. I then created the data mask for data analysis to showcase all the outputs and conclusions. As a result, there is a clear breakdown of total collections, the different parameters, customer-based information, and other essential information. We are partners of Microsoft BI and I'm a solutions architect.

The solution has helped increase the client's total sales revenue for their collection agent. It's basically MSBA, plus an AIML kind of solution and it helps the client to increase the overall efficiency of their collection agents, increasing total revenue for the company. 

The most valuable feature is the data flow related to the container and the control flow. Microsoft has recently introduced paginated reports in the status part. These are web-based and also mobile-based, depending upon the layout of the report. It can be easily printed in Word format as well as in layout format, regardless of size. 

There are some connector-related issues in their MSBA solution and there are certain features that Microsoft should include in the MSBA solution. One is the connective level problem that we currently face from the different data sources. It provides about 80% connectivity to all the data sources, but there is the remaining 20%. They could provide some kind of additional functionality which would make it a great solution. 

I've been using this solution for about 18 months. 

The solution is pretty stable in its current form, and we are working on the same platform to optimize and incorporate everything. 

This solution is fully configurable and totally scalable. We are currently expanding the solution to include the area collections managers, the territory collection managers, and the regional collection managers. There are currently close to 3,000 users who are field collection agents. There is a maintenance cost but it's pretty low because it's an on-premise solution, so there is no cost attached to the server-based maintenance. Our support team is responsible for maintenance.

The solution is currently used throughout the company although there are geographical restrictions. They plan to extend usage to a pan-country level. It will take some time to implement but we are at the end stages of deployment on the pan-country level. Once completed, we expect there will be around 15,000 users. 

We provide technical support as required by our clients. Urgent issues can be resolved within two or three hours. 

Microsoft BI is similar to Talent and Pentaho BI but Microsoft is more competitive and flexible over the other BI solutions. We can cover up or build our end-to-end solution from scratch and that includes reporting and we don't need to go to any kind of a visualization tool for that.

The initial setup was complex because the data vault was not totally structured and we needed to create some kind of a data lake, dump the data, then analyze it and create the data mask. We require certain validations and checks before importing or exporting the data as well as the application of the cubes to SSRS before reporting services. Deployment time can be dependent on the server and we have designed the system to optimize the process. We have a deployment team which can include two to three developers. Deployment takes about 10 minutes. The client decides on the deployment plan because they have applications that hang on the production server and don't want deployment to hamper other applications. 

Microsoft BI is provided as a BI solution to incorporate or implement all data in a single platform. It enables you to build a data mart for your company and analyze it on a single platform. Even data analysis techniques can be carried out on this platform, and output of data can be visualized from the SSRS reporting tool. In this solution, the ROI is quite high because collection has increased up to 25% in one month compared to the same month last year.

We have used a client-based service in the pricing. As yet, there are no additional costs. 

For anyone interested in building a BI solution from scratch, it's important to be aware that the data is not taken at a single platform. I believe that Microsoft BI is the best platform for this because it gives the flexibility to store the data into an SQL Server from different sources, and the ability to first dump your data into those servers. The analysis and reporting is in the same platform. Power BI has a much greater range than SSRS. Microsoft BI is a tool that gives it to you on a single platform, and you can build an end-to-end BI solution. This is not possible in Power BI. 

This solution gives me the total flexibility to use my skill set, in the technical forms and in the analysis form, in one go. I can do several things on a single platform regarding the data science, as well as the data analysis, pulling information, analyzing data, transforming data, creating data lakes, data warehouse, and data masks, all in a single platform. 

I rate this solution a nine out of 10. 

There are multiple use cases. I can't count them even on my fingers. There are around 20 to 30 solutions we have been deploying. We use it across finance, procurement, HR, engineering, and whatnot. Each of the domains we have touched. Data visualization is the main need of any organization. With Microsoft being in our ecosystem, Power BI works perfectly well for us.

The solution overall works quite well, especially if you have a Microsoft-heavy ecosystem.

The ease of creating the dashboard is quite good. 

The analytics are very strong when we couple it with Azure. It offers very good Big Data Analytics that work perfectly well. 

Scalability is not at all a problem. 

You can perform the role-based access perfectly. It gives you everything you need with a single sign-on authentication due to the fact that we are in the Microsoft environment.

You don't have to worry about security. That is very robust.

What matters most is the turnaround time to create a solution, which is quite fast. This is due to the fact that it's quite intuitive in nature. Even those new to the solution can create solutions very quickly. There isn't a high learning curve.

The initial setup was not difficult.

The pricing has been pretty good. 

Technical support is quite responsive.

Overall, the solution is quite intuitive.

If I compare it to Tableau, I'd say the visualizations can be better. We should have multiple options. By that I mean, while there are multiple options for the visualization, the look and feel of the dashboard when you compare to Tableau is on the lower side. Tableau has a much better visualization.

We've been using the solution for three and a half years at this point. We've definitely used it over the last 12 months.

The product is quite stable. It works well in the Microsoft environment. It doesn't crash or freeze. there are no bugs or glitches. It's reliable.

The solution scales very well. If a company needs to expand its offering, it can do so easily. It's one of the selling points of the solution.

We have about 60 to 70 people on the solution currently.

We already are deployed it at a global level. It's just not India-based. We use it across our organization, and it is getting used a lot.

We've dealt directly with technical support. They have been responsive. We have called them multiple times and the response was good. We are quite satisfied with the level of service.

The initial setup was okay. We didn't have any problems. I wouldn't call it complex. I'd describe it more as straightforward. It took us around three or four months to set up and deploy the solution.

We have a yearly contract. We signed up for three years and that rolls over annually.

We have a bundle, an enterprise-level package. Its pricing is good for us.

We did evaluate Tableau for a moment, however, due to the existing license of Microsoft, the default choice was Power BI.

We are using the latest version of the solution. I can't recall the exact version number.

It's one of the leaders in the top data visualization and analytics toolsets. I'd advise other companies to go for it. It's stable, scalable, and a powerful product and it comes very handy when you want to create visualizations very fast. It's a go-to product if you want to go for data visualization and reporting.

Overall, I would rate the solution at a nine out of ten.

I am using the solution for data analytics.

I have found the best features to be the dashboard creation, graphs, charts, and presentation bar graphs. As for now, I am able to do a lot of operations but not with much proficiency. I am just getting started with it. I am not very good at doing dashboard creation or writing reports but sometimes I do it during office hours to understand and learn the analytical tools.

I have been doing trial and error to figuring out how to do the data analyzing and modeling. There could be some improvement to simplify it.

I have been using the solution for approximately one year.

I am only working with small datasets at the moment and the solution has been stable. I am not sure how it will be for larger datasets. We have approximately 50 people using the solution in my organization.

This solution came free, it was offered by Microsoft with our E3 license.

This solution is a useful tool for the business and experts. It has plenty of features. I do not have a lot of advice because I am just starting to explore the solution but I have found it very helpful in terms of data presentation. 

I rate Microsoft BI a nine out of ten.

It is used for data visualization and analytics. We have its latest version.

It has provided better and deeper analytics for our data. It has also been helpful for custom visualizations as per client requirements.

Reports, dashboards, and visualizations are most valuable.

It should have more report outputs. They should expand the report outputs.

Its documentation should also be better.

I have been using this solution for five years.

It is fairly stable.

It is scalable based on licensing. You would need premium and additional organizational licenses. Mostly everyone in the organization uses this feature. We have around 4,000 users of this solution in our organization, which includes a lot of project management people.

We don't have any plans to increase the usage in the future. We are currently content with its usage.

They exceed expectations and provide good quality support.

We had other solutions, but they were some form of ad hoc databases and spreadsheets. We switched to this solution for integrating various data sets from different data sources and for richer analytics.

It was straightforward. It took two weeks.

It was an in-house job. For its maintenance, we probably have a staff of about 20 people.

I would rate Microsoft BI a seven out of ten. It is a really well-developed product, but it has some room for improvement.

It is good for us for onboarding the data. We can connect to multiple data sources, do transformations to make the data usable, and then model it within the transformation.

Someone who has come from a Microsoft Excel environment will easily be able to use this solution. Power query and report modeling are easy to understand in this solution.

Their technical support is very good. They are extremely responsive, helpful, and hands-on.

The visual outlet or the visualization aspect can be improved because the settings piece is quite problematic. It requires a lot of time to set the visuals and check. It is quite fiddly to change all the settings and font sizes. It just needs better ability in terms of using templates or visualization templates to get the vision. Our users always benchmark based on the product, and they don't appreciate everything under the bonnet. The only rating is based on the actual reports in the settings for the dashboard. They should make it look a bit funky and a bit more aesthetically pleasing on the eye. It is quite a fiddly tool, but other than that, it is pretty slick. 

Because it is community-driven, the marketplace tends to be changing forever. You get the standard visualizations, and you've also got all other marketplace visualizations that require you to spend a bit more money and purchase things in the marketplace. With certain visualizations, there is no longevity. I had used certain visualizations, but they discontinued them, and I had to rebuild my reports, which is obviously very frustrating. There should be some sort of stabilization around how the marketplace visuals impact the users when they expire.

I have been using this solution for about two and a half years. We use Power BI Premium, and we have its latest version.

It is scalable once you've got your ducks in a row. We live in a world of fast-paced data. The business I am working in is dealing with a lot of unstructured data, so it has to go through the data onboarding transformation piece. It is more scalable if it connects to a data warehouse, but connecting to an Excel spreadsheet or unstructured data requires enormous amounts of investment. I have seen some other tools that are more data wrangling tools, so you don't want to blur your line. You need to stick to what you're good at. Is it data visualization and modeling, or is it data transformation? They're trying to diversify and make the tool all-encompassing, but we're now having to use a different tool for data transformation or data wrangling. We then just connect it to a data warehouse, and it becomes a really slick and scalable tool.

They are very good. They are extremely responsive and helpful. They arrange a call quite quickly, and they actually get on the call and help you and do troubleshooting with you. They are not sending you to the Q&A page. They are quite hands-on in terms of support. So, I am really happy with their support.

I would advise others to just make sure that whatever you're going to deploy can be scaled out. You should get your data modeling in place first. 

I would recommend this solution. They have so many releases every month, which is quite cool. They are keeping on top of it, and it is not like you have to wait six months for a release. I'm still trying to keep up with the releases of the last four or five months.

I would rate Power BI a nine out of ten.

We are using it for analyzing transactions. In the products that we develop and supply to our customers, there are some applications that are connected to payments. We analyze the trend of transactions or payments that are done in our system by our clients. We want to understand how our clients are using our solution and if there are some conditions that are making them use our product more than others. We also analyze who is paying and how much, and how and at what time are they using our system.

It is stable enough. It has a lot of powerful functions. It can also be customized with the DAX language. 

It is also intuitive enough and incremental. You can start with something simple, and then step-by-step, you can increase the reports and dashboards according to your needs. 

When you go to the cloud, its licensing is not intuitive. It is a little bit complex. When you have to purchase a new license, it is difficult to understand on their website what exactly you need to pay and how you can group. It is something that is applicable to all Microsoft products. They're not always so simple and clear when it comes to licensing.

Their support can also be better in terms of explaining how they resolved an issue and what steps they took to resolve it. They are able to resolve the issue, but they can be better at explaining the approach they took to resolve the issue.

It could have something in the direction of machine learning. It can have some kind of integration with machine learning where you can ask for some reports with natural language.

I have been using this solution for two years.

It is stable enough.

It is easy to make it grow as a product. Our organization is not big. We have a total of 10 to 15 people who access this solution. We will continue to use it for sure. 

In general, we are producing applications that we sell to our clients in a SaaS model. All data of our clients is inside our database. The clients have to manage the service. All this data that they are loading in our server can have interesting information for them. So, we are using it to understand our clients and the behavior of the user.

We had to use some support for licensing. They were fast enough, but sometimes, they were not very clear. We had a few calls with them. In the end, they solved the problem, but they didn't have a very clear approach. It was more of a communication problem. Their support can be better in terms of explaining how they resolved an issue and what steps they took to resolve it. 

Its installation is easy on the cloud as well as on the desktop. You can also easily move and publish from desktop to the cloud. We had issues with licensing, but after you have received licenses, it is easy. 

It is also good how the data that is being collected on some servers for different data centers is automatically synchronized. It is easy enough to do automatic scaling or collect the data from the source and the publisher.

We did it ourselves. At the moment, we are not using a consultant. It is intuitive enough for our use, and there is one type of analysis and one type of role. However, in the future, we might require a consultant for customizing the dashboard and the reports and splitting the data according to different roles. We would require analysis of different roles based on different sets of data. For machine learning, we'll surely require a consultant.

For its deployment and maintenance, we have three or four people for each specific competency. Some of them are more experienced in the data that has to be collected, and some of them are experienced in how data can be collected from the in-house server. There are also some people who are more competent in the business domain.

We pay for users who are publishing on the cloud. The desktop version is free.

Its licensing is on a yearly basis.

I would recommend this solution. It has many features that are good. It mostly needs improved licensing. 

I would rate Power BI a nine out of ten. 

We are using it for reporting, analytics, and data science. We have its latest version.

Microsoft's CRM platform has very limited reporting capabilities. Power BI was able to meet the business requirements for reporting and more in-depth analytics. It is a part of the Microsoft Ecosystem, and there is a straightforward connection from Power BI to CRM. 

It is a pretty straightforward and flexible solution for data integration and modeling. It is a low-code solution. When you are doing data integration, you can use the GUI, which is very simple and straightforward. You can also do very intricate custom queries and model it at different levels. It is very easy to use and scalable. 

It is kept very current, and there is an update literally every month. However, the interface changes quite randomly with no documentation, which is difficult at the domain and architectural level where you're planning things and engaging the business. Things change frequently, and you wonder where has the button for the new report gone. They should provide better documentation on interface changes.

It should be better optimized. It is supposed to be a data integration tool, but it is doing relatively simple queries. It has its limitations. For example, you can only pull a number of columns. So, there is room for optimization on its ability to integrate multiple data sources. 

The desktop tool is very memory-intensive, and again, this is not documented clearly. It requires a heavy CPU and memory use, and it causes your operating systems to become unstable.

I would like to see the ability to create datasets within Power BI. Microsoft is promoting Azure as a cloud solution, but it is dependent upon a desktop component, which seems a little bit deceptive. Data set is the basic element that you report from, but it has to be created on the desktop and then published to the cloud. So, you're in the cloud, and you create a data structure or the data flow, but you can't report from that. You have to leave the cloud, go to your desktop, create the data set on your desktop, and publish it to the cloud. You go back to the cloud and create your report by using that published data set, which is very non-intuitive. If you go to the Microsoft Power BI community, this is a common complaint across the entire community.

I have been using this solution for about 18 months.

It is pretty stable. I haven't determined any major issues.

It is very scalable. It fits perfectly with the larger Azure Data Lake reference architecture. Power BI platform is a fundamental piece, and it becomes scalable to use with other components within that reference architecture.

We're in the process of laying out a three-phase approach. Over the next year, its usage will increase from 50% to 75%. In terms of the number of users, we have around 150 users who are data scientists and data analysts. We have around 5,500 desktop users, and it is a part of 365, which is on every desktop. 

There is a lot of online support. We also have Microsoft consultants on contract, and the support comes through them. Their support is very good.

We also have IBM Cognos. We haven't switched. They're being used in tandem. There are different sets of requirements for two different solutions. 

I wasn't part of the deployment, but my understanding is that it was pretty straightforward.

We used a Microsoft consultant for implementation. Our experience was good. We don't have any maintenance crew.

I would rate Microsoft BI a nine out of ten.

Our primary use cases for this product are monitoring and reporting. I have some dashboards for the sales department and a little bit for operations. I'm going to create a new dashboard for marketing. 

What I like about Power BI compared to Tableau, for example, is that Tableau is mostly a visualization program, but Power BI is a more complete solution, because it has DAX, Power Query, and a presentation and graphic layer. So, I use it not only for reporting and graphic purposes on the frontend, but also for doing things like modeling. It is very flexible, a lot more flexible for than Tableau for what I need.

One of the things that I appreciate is that premium features that used to cost $5,000 per company per month recently became a lot more accessible. Microsoft recently implemented a per user feature in Power BI Premium; it's $20 per month. I'm investigating in that because I think the price is good. 

I would like to be able to use more predicting data science features without having to use R. If I were able to do most of the data science that I normally do inside Power BI without using R, I would decrease my use of R and mostly use Power BI. 

I have been using Microsoft Power BI for four and a half to five years. I have been using it since they created in basically. I started using it when it was Power Pivot in Excel and as soon as they created Power BI, I started using it. 

I recommend easing into Microsoft Power BI gradually. I started by creating models and graphics in Excel first. Then, when I learned a little bit about modeling, I started moving to Power BI and working there. 

So, I recommend starting with Excel and practicing there first. Power Pivot is the app that you can use in Excel for this kind of work. Before switching to Power BI, learn about data modeling and dashboarding in Power Pivot in Excel first. 

Before switching to Microsoft Power BI, I evaluated Tableau. It's a lot cheaper to use Power BI. The cost per user in Power BI is around $10 per month, while the cost per user for Tableau is a lot more expensive. That was a deciding factor for me.