Overall Satisfaction with Microsoft Power BI
Pros
- Excel integration, allowing users more familiar with Excel to transition over with relative ease.
- Inexpensive license model, compared to Tableau which can get very expensive depending on your needs.
- Updates, by far Power BI is one of the most updated apps currently. With monthly releases of new features and fixes.
Cons
- Poor interface, not as intuitive as Tableau and very typical of Microsoft where it can easily get you 80% of the way there, while getting the last 20% is seemingly impossible.
- Not enough flexibility in formatting, whereas in Tableau getting something to look 'pixel perfect' takes a lot of effort, in Power BI in a lot instances 'pixel perfect' is not even an option given the lack of controls in formatting.
- Reliance on Excel means data related best practices are naturally hindered by the kind of 'dirty' data that is typically used in Excel as opposed to cleaned up tables sitting in data warehouses.
- Positive - Allowing users to migrate from Excel to a more modern platform saving hundreds of man hours from dealing with poor data practices and VBA related shenanigans.
- Positive - Good and inexpensive entry point to serve as a starting point on educating developers and end users on data visualization best/worst practices.
- Negative - Another barrier to hiring, as users are expected to have Power BI experience which lowers the number of potential candidates.
In this case where in my organization we had Tableau first, [Microsoft] Power BI is only picked in cases where Tableau licensing costs become an issue. Whereas in other organizations where [Microsoft] Power BI is the first option, Tableau is rarely picked as an alternative as [Microsoft] Power BI is deemed to be 80% 'good enough' for 10% of the cost. The only major issue being if you needed that extra 20% in which [Microsoft] Power BI will struggle to deliver.
Do you think Microsoft Power BI delivers good value for the price?
Yes
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
Microsoft Power BI Feature Ratings
Microsoft Power BI Training
- no training
While for anyone familiar with Microsoft applications, training would mostly be less pertinent than simply just jumping into the application and learning on the fly.
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