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Power BI

by Microsoft Corporation, | Founded 1975, Albuquerque, NM

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Power BI

by Microsoft Corporation, | Founded 1975, Albuquerque, NM

What is Power BI?

Industry Specialties: Serves all industries.

Microsoft Power BI is an analytics tool that assists in reporting, data mining and data visualization to provide business insights. Through Power BI's simple interface, businesses can connect to a variety of data sources and create their own dashboards and reports.

Originally born from Excel as an add-on, Power BI has since grown to stand on its own. At a relatively low cost, Power BI fulfills the needs of organizations ranging from small business owners to enterprise operators.

There are three versions: Desktop, which is available for free for individual use, an upgraded Pro plan offered on a monthly price-per-user SaaS subscription and a capacity-based Premium plan which provides enterprise-level insights with on-premise deployment and a dedicated cloud infrastructure.

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Power BI Pricing

Based on our most recent analysis, Power BI pricing and cost details are described here:

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Price: $
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Starting From: Still gathering data
Pricing Model: Monthly
Free Trial

Product Information and Resellers

Product Information

Reseller - WIA Business Systems

Power BI Benefits and Insights

Why use Power BI?

Key differentiators & advantages of Power BI

Live 360-Degree View of Data: Stay in the loop about crucial business insights. Power BI's dashboards update in real time from all data sources.
Visualize Data Trends: Create intuitive visualizations to present data after it is parsed, structured and analyzed. This can be in the form of graphs, charts, maps or other graphic depictions that make interpreting data quicker, easier and more impactful.
Make Data-Driven Decisions: Put the data visualizations to work — analyze not only what happened, but also why, how and where. Use data to improve business processes and customer interactions, adjust business plans and make forecasts.
Ease of Use: Encourages user adoption towards a data driven culture. Power BI simplifies self-service BI with built-in features similar to Excel and other Microsoft technologies — feel right at home with functionalities like drag-and-drop design, resizing and copy-and-paste.
Collaborate Across Organization: Share reports and collaborate on decisions quickly; save time otherwise spent on inefficient meetings or jumping from one platform to another. Integrates seamlessly with many commonly used business tools to promote teamwork throughout departments.
On-the-Go Access: Access visual analytics on the go with Power BI. Stay connected to and share insights from any device, with mobile-optimized reports and a mobile app.
Secure Insights: As one of the largest, most well-known names in the software industry, Microsoft backs up their reputation with security and protection for businesses’ sensitive information in Power BI. Visit the Trust Center to learn more about exactly how all of Microsoft’s solutions — including Power BI — meet industry security standards and ensure regulatory compliance. Keeps information secure from the original data source all the way up through the report sharing and collaboration features.
Free Version: Power BI goes beyond a free trial with a perpetually free Desktop version, suitable for creating reports and data visualizations on an individual basis.
Scalability and Affordability: Power BI can scale from the individual to the enterprise level as a whole, while only paying for exactly what’s necessary — choose the right option from versions varying in capabilities and pricing.

Industry Expertise

Any organization that wants to analyze their data to make more informed decisions can benefit from a business intelligence solution. Some of Power BI’s industry specialties include telecommunications, government, automotive, financial services, manufacturing, health, media and entertainment, education, retail and more.

Power BI Reviews

Average customer reviews & user sentiment summary for Power BI:

4795 reviews

88%

of users would recommend this product

Synopsis of User Ratings and Reviews

Based on an aggregate of Power BI reviews taken from the sources above, the following pros & cons have been curated by a SelectHub Market Analyst.

Pros

Seamless Integration with Microsoft: Of the users who mention Power BI’s seamless integration with Microsoft systems, 96% cite it as a huge advantage over competitors, as data analyzed in Power BI automatically updates in other software in the Microsoft suite, including Teams, Sharepoint, Excel, Office 365 and more.
Data Connectivity: About 86% of users who mention the platform’s data connectors say that not only is its automatic Excel integration a plus, but also that it complements many ERP systems and connects to live warehouses with ease.
Data Visualization: More than 98% of users who review Power BI’s data visualization capabilities praise the platform for its drag-and-drop WYSIWYG builder, customization and formatting options and prebuilt templates tailored to different needs in creating appealing graphics that make data more understandable and actionable for business users.
Filters and Drill Down: All of the users who mention interactive functions like custom filters, drill-downs or slice and dice say that they appreciate being able to dig deeper for self-service BI.
Functionality: Over 97% of users who reflect on Power BI’s features say that it is a robust system that grants both depth and breadth of insights with advanced analytics capabilities, making insights accessible to all users within companies big and small alike.

Cons

Learning Curve: With great power comes great amounts of training; about 85% of Power BI reviewers say that the difficulty of implementation paired with the many complexities of the system contribute to its steeper-than-average learning curve. It is not a plug-and-play system, and many of the more advanced features, especially data querying, require a knowledge of database management and query languages that may be unavailable to the average user.
Pricing and Licensing: About 56% of reviews mentioning the solution’s cost say that it’s a good value for the price, but 44% of reviews disagree with that point. While there is a free version of Power BI, it’s very limited in functionality and licenses are required even to view reports created by subscribers. In addition, some administrators note that it’s difficult to manage all the licenses and users within an organization.
Speed: Over 96% of recent reviews that refer to the platform’s speed say that it is resource hungry, especially struggling with crunching large datasets, and often experience glitches, lags and bugs. In addition, some users say that deployment and implementation are time-consuming processes.

Researcher's Summary:

Microsoft Power BI is no doubt a powerful business intelligence platform, from one of the leaders in the technology field, with some users even saying that its potential seems to be limitless due to its extensibility and scalability. Power BI has resounding success with its intuitive interface, robust data visualization capabilities and interactive features that make analytics accessible to all users. Power users say that its support for DAX, R, Python and other query languages give them access to even more complex calculations, data querying, data preparation and data modeling, making Power BI a strong solution for technical and non-technical users alike. However, many customers say that while Power BI may have a user-friendly GUI, it’s not necessarily a user-friendly system, with many users saying that they required heavy training or preexisting knowledge to really understand how to work with the system. While many users cite its seamless Microsoft and Windows integration as a pro, especially for those companies that have already invested in Microsoft-based solutions, others say that Power BI’s incompatibility with non-Windows systems and weaker integrations with non-Microsoft solutions are a point of frustration for them. The cloud-based platform offers responsive mobile and web access to dashboards, but several users note that browser functionality is limited. Power BI reviews seemed to be mixed as to Power BI's sharing capabilities, with about 65% of users satisfied that Power BI helps them in making presentations and catering to different audiences, with the other approximately 35% expressing dissatisfaction with its limited display and export options, as well as restrictions on non-subscribers not being able to view dashboards. Another pain point for Power BI seems to be its operating speed, particularly when working with large datasets. In summary, Microsoft Power BI is a strong contender in the business intelligence field, earning mostly positive reviews for its boost to productivity and efficiency, and an especially good choice for customers already using Microsoft technologies like Excel, but may be difficult for new users to adopt.

Key Features

The following is a list of key Power BI features:

Data Source Connectivity: Draw data from hundreds of supported sources both on-premises and cloud-based, including web APIs, Salesforce, Dynamics 365, Excel, Google Analytics, JSON and text/CSV files, Oracle, SQL and more.
Data Preparation: A self-service Power Query process ingests, transforms, integrates and enriches data while preparing it for analysis in Power BI. Organize unstructured data into interpretable data sets to highlight trends. Approach analysis from different angles with intuitive filters and data manipulation features.
Data Visualization: Power BI creates a range of visualizations from data that conceptualize trends and patterns. These can be a range of different graphics including bar graphs, line graphs, pie charts, scattergrams, maps, etc. Power BI transforms abstract concepts and hard numbers into easy-to-interpret charts.
Pre-Built or Custom Dashboards/Reports: Choose from a range of pre-built templates optimized for most industries to generate visualizations of KPIs in seconds. Or, if out-of-the-box reports don’t cut it, design customized data stories with a drag-and-drop canvas and hundreds of interactive visualization options in Power BI.
Natural Language Processing: Explore data through conversational language with the built-in Q&A tool; find meaningful answers to data-related questions.
Secure Data Governance: Prevent data loss with role-specific data protection and row-level security. Safeguards data so that Power BI meets industry-level compliance standards and certifications. Allows administrators to centralize data governance, security and management across the organization.
Collaboration: Power BI fosters collaboration through a data-driven culture of business intelligence with features like team commenting, alerts and content subscriptions. Publish and share permissions-adjustable reports and dashboards, both internally and externally.
Mobile Compatibility: All reports in Power BI are optimized for mobile and can be published to the cloud or on-premises, or embedded into existing apps or websites. Receive personal data alerts, quickly view and share insights and stay in the know from any mobile device on Android or iOS, or any PC or tablet or phone with access to the Windows Store.
Embedded Analytics: Brand and customize custom analytics offerings for end-users with white label capabilities and a plethora of visualization options. Develop and test custom modules to embed Power BI's analytics capabilities into other applications.
Seamless Integration: Power BI seamlessly integrates with everything in the Microsoft Office 365 Suite, as well as a range of other software and BI solutions. This includes third-party data sources like Spark, Google Analytics and more.
On-Premises or Cloud Server: As part of the Premium plan, Power BI's Report Server provides a hybrid, comprehensive solution by building a BI environment on-premises, keeping it safe behind the intranet firewall. Allows the flexibility to move the server to the cloud as per requirements, protecting the business’ investment and data for the future.

Limitations

Some of Power BI's limitations include:

No direct integration available for services like Vend POS or Shopify
Graphical visualization is fairly limited as compared to other BI tools
Doesn’t support SQL queries
Comparatively difficult to work with huge data sets on Power BI
Doesn’t let users build scheduled reports, personalized user views, personalized notifications, personalized security views or customizable reports

Suite Support

The support portal and ticket system for Power BI is only available for free to Pro subscribers, otherwise submitting support tickets can incur a fee. First, check the resource center for possible resolutions to issues in Power BI; navigate to the support page and view the free support options including demos, documentation, samples, community forums, blogs, webinars and feedback.

Email: Direct email support is not available.

Phone: Direct phone support is not available. Submit a support ticket through the support portal and request a response to the ticket by phone call.

Training: Access self-guided learning and product documentation for free through the knowledge center, or attend boot camps and training on the tool. edX offers a free online data science course, with an optional professional certificate available for $99. Microsoft’s consulting service partners offer workshops that range in cost from free to upwards of $25,000.

Tickets: Log in to a Microsoft account to submit a ticket. Ticketed support for Power BI is only free to Pro subscribers.

Top Competitors

Here are the other software most often considered with Microsoft Power BI in actual selection project*:

*Data derived from SelectHub's Jumpstart & Decision Platforms

Cost of Ownership

License/Subscription Cost	Based on the number of users for Power BI Pro and capacity-based pricing for Power BI Premium
Maintenance Cost	Included in the subscription cost
Installation/Implementation Cost	Included in the subscription cost. Additional charges may apply for data migration during implementation of Power BI, maintaining on-premise data sources and building dashboards and reports
Customization Cost	Dependent on functional requirements and specific needs of the organization
Data Migration Cost/Change Management/Upfront Switching Cost	Dependent on your current software, amount of data to be migrated, availability of migration tools, complexity of data and gaps between the existing system and the new system.
Recurring/Renewal Costs	Renewal cost is included in the fees paid monthly or annually

Pricing Details

The following is a detailed rundown of Power BI pricing:

Category	Description	Price/Details
Power BI Desktop Author	Connect to hundreds of data sources Clean and prepare data using visual tools Analyze and build stunning reports with custom visualizations Publish to the Power BI service Embed in public websites	$ Free
Power BI Pro Share and Collaborate	Build dashboards that deliver a 360-degree, real-time view of the business Keep data up-to-date automatically, including on-premise sources Collaborate on shared data Audit and govern how data is accessed and used Package content and distribute to users with apps
Power BI Premium For large deployments	Distribute and embed content without purchasing per-user licenses Publish reports on-premise with Power BI Report Server Unlock more capacity and higher limits for your Pro users	Power BI pro licenses need to be purchased for Power BI premium subscription for content authoring
Deployment Model	What options are available for product deployment?	Cloud-based/SaaS
Pricing Model	What is the pricing model?	Subscription-based Capacity-based
Minimum commitment	Is there a minimum monthly or yearly commitment required for purchase of Power BI?	Minimum annual commitment is required for purchase
Custom Quote	Is there an option for requesting a custom quote?	Available
Free Trial	Does the solution provide a free product trial option?	Available

Pricing & Cost Details

Includes Price/User and Minimum Commitment Terms for Power BI

Value-Added Benefits

How WIA Systems adds value to Power BI

Flexible Deployment: WIA Business Systems enables flexible on-premise and in-cloud deployment, in addition to hybrid implementations, leveraging Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Tailored Implementation: Customize the tool to business size and needs — from self-service BI to enterprise-level functionality — with dedicated technical assistance, saving company time.
Regular Updates: Get regular updates and patches for priority defects. WIA Business Systems maintains thorough records of all customizations, updates and patches that they provide.
Issue Resolution: The reseller maintains a replica of the live environment — with matching test data — to replicate and troubleshoot issues for faster resolution.

Industry Expertise

WIA Business Systems provides analytics solutions to clients in multiple industries throughout the USA, Canada, UK, UAE & Asia. These sectors include manufacturing, engineering, construction, retail, transportation and logistics, equipment, infrastructure, telecom, energy, aerospace and defense.

Support and Services

Advice: Get support for all issues related to the customizations and core updates that the reseller provides.

Consulting: Talk to certified consultants to get domain and product knowledge at any stage of the deployment process.

Engineering: Call 1-877-942-7978 or email info@wiasystems.com for more information on their services or reach out to them through the Contact page on their website. Get access to trained support professionals Monday through Friday or round-the-clock for a fee.

Implementation: Get dedicated implementation support and stay updated on the deployment status with project management and project reporting tools.

Training: Sign up for customized training programs that include onsite, individual, and classroom training, video tutorials and courses.