- Analytics & Reporting
Why Microsoft Power BI as a BI-tool?
Power BI vs. Qlik vs. Tableau
No doubt you've heard about Microsoft Power BI. But other BI tools such as Tableau and Qlik may also ring a bell. But exactly which BI tool is the best option for your company?
Below is an overview of why Gartner, a well-known research firm in the IT sector, names Microsoft Power BI as market leader. And why we too choose this reporting tool!
What is a BI-tool?
A BI tool is software that collects and analyzes data in order to provide insight through dashboards and visualizations. Business Intelligence covers the entire process: data collection, data analysis and data visualization.
Power BI, Tableau and Qlik are the three parties that dominate the BI market. When choosing a suitable BI tool, these three options are quickly compared. But which tool is the best fit for your company?
Gartner evaluates power BI as the market leader
The well-known Gartner, an American research and consulting firm in the IT sector, publishes their “Gartner Magic Quadrant for BI platforms” every year. In this quadrant, Gartner evaluates a range of BI technology vendors based on two criteria: their completeness of vision and their ability to execute. By assigning a score to each BI partner, Gartner divides the partners into different quadrants:
The result of the conducted research is clear. On the figure, Microsoft Power BI appears at the far right as the market leader and thus scores best on both vision and execution. The main reason Gartner chooses Power BI is its ability to quickly analyze and transform data visually using queries. As well as the functionality to easily create interactive dashboards.
Gartner's research highlights the following three strengths of Power BI:
- Accessibility via Office 365, Teams and Azure Synapse.
Because Power BI is now contained in the Office 365 E5 licenses, this ensures a huge spread of the tool. Many organizations have been using Microsoft Teams for several years to collaborate remotely. Because Power BI is now contained in the same interface as Teams, this makes it very easy for end users to also use Power BI. - Price/value combination.
Gartner shows that Power BI does not sacrifice quality by establishing a low pricing model. The BI tool is able to set up reports easily and charge a low price for them. They also underscore the richness of Power BI Service, the cloud version of Power BI that lets you share data throughout your organization. - Integration with the entire Power Platform.
Gartner emphasizes Microsoft's business-oriented vision. With the Power Platform, including Power BI, Power Apps and Power Automate, Power BI provides a powerful ecosystem to handle tools together. For example, it is possible to use data from Power Apps in your Power BI reports. Or, for example, to write data back out via Power Automate. The integration of these tools makes Power BI a clear winner.
Gartner, for example, crowns Microsoft the BI market leader. Indeed, Microsoft's vision is to grow Power BI into the tool for data and analytics in every organization by 2022.
How horsum jumped on the Power BI train
horsum has been helping organizations streamline their processes since 2011. To monitor those processes, the need for insightful reporting soon arose. Initially, we used Excel for this, to set up reports via pivot tables and queries.
That worked ... but Excel had its limitations. The charts and tables required a manual refresh every month, large amounts of data caused delays, and the reports were often static. Moreover, attractive visualizations failed to materialize.
Power BI vs. Tableau vs. Qlik
The need for a solid Business Intelligence (BI) tool became urgent. Several years ago, we made a conscious decision within horsum to go full Power BI.
Even during our own evaluation of BI tools, Microsoft Power BI quickly proved to be the standout. The affordable license price and ease of use formed a low threshold for trying Power BI. Sharing reports throughout the organization also proved a hit.
Qlik and Tableau, on the other hand, quickly proved too expensive and lacked a collaborative approach to sharing data.
Do you want more information about Power BI? Or do you want to set up a reporting system in Power BI for your organization, but don't know where to start?
