Power BI is a good way to read numbers you already have, and a poor way to show them to strangers.
Most businesses already own the numbers. They sit in Excel files, an accounting export and a database nobody opens. It pulls them into one set of reports that refresh on a schedule, so everyone in Monday’s meeting reads the same figures.
It suits a company that already lives in Microsoft 365. Sign-in, sharing and Excel habits carry straight over. It works less well as a screen for customers or partners, because every outside viewer raises a licensing question you should settle first.
Power BI is Microsoft’s tool for turning tables of data into charts, tables and filters you can click. You connect it to files, databases or online services, describe how the tables relate, and design pages of visuals on top. Reports are published to a shared workspace, where colleagues open them in a browser or the mobile app.
Where it earns its place.
What it is genuinely good at
- Reading Excel, SQL Server, Azure and SharePoint data without building anything in between
- Sales, finance and stock reports that managers can filter themselves
- A data model shared by many reports, so a figure means one thing everywhere
- Scheduled refresh, so nobody pastes a fresh export every morning
- Sign-in through the company’s Microsoft accounts, with no separate user list
Where the data model turns against you
Reports are only as sensible as the tables behind them. Most disappointing dashboards are a modelling problem, not a charting one.
- One wide spreadsheet loaded as it is, which makes every total slow and doubtful
- Relationships between tables that are guessed rather than designed
- Measures written in DAX that nobody on the team can read later
- Row-level rules that look right in testing and leak data in production
A little time spent on a clean set of tables saves months of arguing about whose number is correct.
Where we use it
- Management dashboards over a client’s existing SQL Server or Excel data
- Reports that sit beside the operational software we build, reading its database
- A first view of the business before anyone commits to a larger data warehouse
- Embedded reports inside an internal portal, where the licensing has been checked
- Training the finance team to edit their own pages
The licences and upkeep behind the dashboard
The software is easy to start and harder to budget. Licence rules change by plan, so read the current vendor terms before you promise anything to staff.
- Each person who builds or shares content usually needs a paid licence of some kind
- Viewers may also need one, unless the reports sit on dedicated capacity
- A gateway server, if your data lives on a machine inside your own office
- Refresh failures when a password expires or a source column is renamed
- Someone who owns the workspace, or old reports pile up and disagree
How it fits beside the rest of your systems
- It reads from your database and does not replace it
- Data that needs cleaning belongs in a pipeline before it reaches the report
- Writing data back, such as approving an order, needs a separate application
- Power Automate and Teams can send alerts when a figure crosses a line
- A warehouse behind it keeps heavy history off the busy operational system
When this is the right choice.
- Your company already uses Microsoft 365 and holds its data in Excel, SQL Server or Azure
- Managers want to filter and explore reports themselves instead of asking for another export
- Several teams need the same figures, defined once and reused
- The audience is staff inside the company, each with their own sign-in
- You want a first dashboard running before deciding on a larger data project
When it is not.
- A customer-facing portal for thousands of outside users, where per-viewer licensing gets awkward
- Screens that must match your brand exactly or behave like part of an application
- Anything that writes data back, approves records or runs a workflow
- A team on Google Workspace with data in Google Sheets, where Looker Studio is simpler
- A single chart that a spreadsheet can already draw in five minutes
Questions we are asked about it.
Is Power BI free?
The desktop authoring program can be downloaded without a licence, but sharing reports with colleagues normally needs paid plans from Microsoft. The exact rules change, so check the vendor’s current terms for your number of builders and viewers before you commit.
Do we need a data warehouse first?
No. It can read Excel files and live databases directly, and that is a sensible way to start. A warehouse earns its place when several systems must be joined or history grows too large for the live database.
Can Power BI work with data outside Microsoft products?
Yes. It has connectors for PostgreSQL, MySQL, Salesforce, Google Analytics and many other sources, plus plain files and web APIs. Microsoft sources are simply the smoothest to set up and sign in to.
Why are our reports so slow?
Usually the data model, not the tool. A single huge table, text columns used for joins or measures that recalculate too much will each slow a page. We tidy the model before touching any visuals.
Can we put Power BI reports inside our own web app?
Yes, through embedding, but it needs the right licensing and a sign-in design for outside users. For a handful of simple charts, building them directly in your application is often cleaner and cheaper to run.
Who looks after it once the dashboards are live?
Someone in your team should own the workspace, refresh schedules and access list. We document the model and the measures, and can take on the upkeep if you would rather not.
Services that use it.
What it sits with.
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