Microsoft Power BI vs Workday Prism Analytics comparison

Microsoft and Workday are both solutions in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category. Microsoft is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.0, while Workday is ranked #17 with an average rating of 9.0. Microsoft holds a 14.1% mindshare in BIT, compared to Workday’s 1.6% mindshare. Additionally, 93% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Workday users who would recommend it.

Microsoft Power BI

Read 326 Microsoft Power BI reviews

22,361 Views
13,864 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

Workday Prism Analytics

Read 5 Workday Prism Analytics reviews

1,506 Views
1,235 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Microsoft Power BI

Workday Prism Analytics

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

Microsoft Power BI and Workday Prism Analytics compete in the business intelligence and analytics space. Power BI generally has the upper hand due to its broader integration capabilities and familiarity across various industry applications, while Workday Prism Analytics is notable for its integration within Workday's ecosystem.

Features: Microsoft Power BI offers dynamic data visualization, the ability to create extensive dashboards, and strong integration with other Microsoft products. Workday Prism Analytics emphasizes enhanced data integration across Workday applications, enriched data preparation, and collaboration functionalities.

Room for Improvement: Power BI could improve its data modeling flexibility and ease of use for non-technical users. Integration with non-Microsoft ecosystems and advanced analytics capabilities can also be enhanced. Workday Prism Analytics could benefit from expanding its integration capabilities beyond Workday’s ecosystem. Furthermore, improving its user interface and reducing the complexity of data preparation and transformation would make it more accessible.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Power BI offers streamlined deployment with both cloud and on-premises options supported by a comprehensive service infrastructure. Workday Prism Analytics provides cloud-based deployment, facilitating quick access to Workday-native analytics, which is particularly advantageous for organizations heavily using Workday solutions.

Pricing and ROI: Microsoft Power BI is known for its flexible pricing model, often resulting in a favorable ROI, especially for those utilizing Microsoft ecosystems. Workday Prism Analytics uses a more niche pricing approach, targeting enterprises invested in Workday systems. While this might involve higher initial costs, the ROI is justifiable for enterprises seeking deep insights within Workday infrastructures.

To learn more, read our detailed Microsoft Power BI vs. Workday Prism Analytics Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Power BI vs. Workday Prism Analytics

September 2025

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Power BI

Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

1st

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

326

Ranking in other categories

Reporting (1st)

Workday Prism Analytics

Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

17th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of Microsoft Power BI is 14.1%, down from 21.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Workday Prism Analytics is 1.6%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Microsoft Power BI	14.1%
Workday Prism Analytics	1.6%
Other	84.3%

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

Featured Reviews

Shoury Priyanshu

Senior Manager, Strategy & Consulting at Viacom18 Media Pvt Ltd

Facilitates seamless data aggregation with some outdated visual elements hindering user appeal

Real-time data integration is an area for improvement. Although I've worked on several solutions involving real-time integration, it's not very user-friendly and often lags, especially with over a million data rows. This makes Power BI difficult to manage as loading times can reach one or two minutes, which is problematic today. There are challenges with scalability, requiring multiple pages in dashboards to manage these issues. Visualization could be improved as it appears outdated. Users, especially newcomers, find it unappealing and not user-friendly.

Read full review

Sarvesh Kumar Jha

Senior Technology Consultant at PricewaterhouseCoopers

Provides great flexibility in terms of data transformation

I really like the flexibility the solution provides in terms of data transformation. Workday introduced Prism Analytics mainly because many clients wanted to merge data from different systems and then work with it to get some insights out of it. For that, they previously used tools like Power BI. Workday Prism Analytics gives you the power to do all the data transformations within Workday itself without taking out crucial data to a third system. I really like the way Workday has enabled Prism Analytics to be that one solution where you can bring everything. It also provides you the flexibility that things like the security model of Workday are still in place. You don't have to redo your security configuration if you do the data transformation outside Workday.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"In the process of using data there is the Extract, Transform and Load (ETL). For extracting we are using another software, for transforming we are using our own coding in C#, and then we use Microsoft BI for loading the information. Microsoft BI displays information very well."

"What's most valuable in this tool is that it gives its users detailed error messages. It's a very stable data analytics tool, and it offers good scalability."

"The best thing about this solution is that it is very user friendly. It is interactive in terms of visualizations. It is very eye-catching, and it attracts users. There are a lot of options to visualize the data in different drafts and views. I have used different visualization tools, and I found Power BI to be more efficient in terms of performance, user-friendliness, and ease of use."

"There are some great automation elements in the product."

"We have a lot of servers and applications from which we want reports, and it allows us to create reports from an SQL source or some other source."

"The drill-down capabilities and automatic charts are the best ones. The visualization is also very good. In terms of visualization, no competing product, such as IBM Cognos or any other product, has the same capabilities."

"Power BI has strong support from Microsoft. If you need help, they answer promptly. There are also several discussion groups where you can get information, like the product roadmap and any new things coming up."

"The tool is very flexible so it allows creativity."

More Microsoft Power BI pros

"The product is easier to use compared to other applications."

"The solution is stable and reliable, with minimal issues affecting its performance."

"I really like the flexibility the solution provides in terms of data transformation."

"The customer service and support are pretty good."

"Feature-wise, I feel that the solution's stability is good."

Cons

"Microsoft BI typically connects to a database, often SQL Server, but it's also capable of connecting to multiple databases, pulling data from them, and allowing for data consolidation. You can then aggregate and generate dashboards and reports from this combined data. Personally, I wouldn't claim to have the expertise to suggest significant changes or additional features, as it functions quite well as is."

"There needs to be improved guidance and documentation for the initial setup of Power BI as it currently remains complex."

"There is room for improvement in terms of pricing for the solution."

"Its price could be better. Its licensing cost is very high."

"The handling of the workspaces can be made more granular for user access rights. It can be managed a little bit better in terms of the connection to Active Directory so that we have more granular access rights. I am not sure if this is really possible or if we can solve it differently, but we need a lot of workspaces, and we are not sure how we can deal with it from the access rights perspective."

"My main complaint is that the error messages need to be made more clear. Currently, they are either too generic or outright misleading, and finding the real problem is like searching for a needle in a haystack."

"Drill-down in dashboards needs to improved. The capability only works in Power BI Desktop today. We need to have an alternative approach today."

"We would like to have better SQL support for queries."

More Microsoft Power BI cons

"There is not much flexibility in how we can add external data within Workday Prisma Analytics."

"It is not a very scalable product."

"One area for improvement in the solution is the ability to manually update individual rows or columns of data once it has been uploaded."

"When you create certain objects, a lot of the time, the fields are text. They’re not numeric, date, or any other field type"

"The visualization techniques must be upgraded."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Its licensing cost is very high. It is $20 per user, which is very high, but it is a good product, so you pay for it."

"Microsoft BI is considered to be competitively priced when compared to other similar solutions in the market."

"The costs are small and the benefits are high."

"The solution is affordable."

"We're charged a monthly subscription fee of 500 rupees per person."

"Their price is good."

"Microsoft BI is very cost-effective and this is why we use it."

"Microsoft BI is not expensive. Compared to the price of other BI products, the price is very fair."

More Microsoft Power BI pricing and cost advice

"I do not know of the licensing cost, but there are additional costs like 5,00,000 for recruitment modules."

"The solution is very expensive."

"Based on whatever I have heard, Workday Prism Analytics is considered an expensive tool."

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Comparison Review

it_user79932

Senior Manager - BI Head at NVidia

Feb 4, 2015

Comparison of SAP BO, Tableau, QlikView, Cognos, Microsoft, OBIEE and Pentaho

1. SAP BO/BI Enterprise scalability Security Ease of use Semantic layer 2. Tableau Visualization Data discovery Turnaround time 3. IBM Cognos Enterprise scalability Security In-memory feature 4. MS BI - Flexibility 5. Pentaho - Open source but still enterprise grade 6. QlikView Data…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

12%

Government

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

12%

Government

Insurance Company

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	134
Midsize Enterprise	57
Large Enterprise	165

No data available

Questions from the Community

Seeking lightweight open source BI software

There are many...It would rather depend what System BI architecture or Enterprise legacy you have at your end...I would recommend as follows: 1) If you have legacies of SAP, Oracle - look for SAP...

See all answers

Is Power BI a complete platform or only a visualization tool?

Power BI is an advanced visualization tool oriented to big data with a very complete set of widgets to visualize information, control users accessing information, the configuration of governance po...

See all answers

How does Oracle OBIEE compare with Microsoft BI?

Oracle OBIEE is great in allowing design and creativity per the individual needs of the organization. Dashboards are fully customizable and very user-friendly. This solution is very stable. Oracle ...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Workday Prism Analytics?

Based on whatever I have heard, Workday Prism Analytics is considered an expensive tool. In fact, that has been one of the hindrance factors for Workday in making Prism Analytics more sellable.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Workday Prism Analytics?

I think there are still some gaps in the solution. There is not much flexibility in how we can add external data within Workday Prisma Analytics. For now, Workday has enabled the SFTP server and Am...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Workday Prism Analytics?

As a consultant, I use Prism Analytics to implement my client systems. I first have design sessions with them, where we discuss their business gaps and then understand how Workday Prism Analytics c...

See all answers

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Compared 6% of the time

IBM Planning Analytics vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 2% of the time

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Tableau Enterprise vs Workday Prism Analytics

Compared 19% of the time

Databricks vs Workday Prism Analytics

Compared 12% of the time

Oracle OBIEE vs Workday Prism Analytics

Compared 5% of the time

Oracle Analytics Cloud vs Workday Prism Analytics

Compared 4% of the time

Alteryx vs Workday Prism Analytics

Compared 3% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Power BI

October 2025

Download Microsoft Power BI product report

Buyer's Guide

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

October 2025

Download Workday Prism Analytics product report

Also Known As

SSRS, SSAS, MSBI, MS Reporting Services, Microsoft BI Tools, Microsoft Big Data, Power BI Pro, MS BI

Prism Analytics

Overview

Microsoft Power BI is a powerful tool for data analysis and visualization. This tool stands out for its ability to merge and analyze data from various sources. Widely adopted across different industries and departments, Power BI is instrumental in creating visually appealing dashboards and generating insightful business intelligence reports. Its intuitive interface, robust visualization capabilities, and seamless integration with other Microsoft applications empower users to easily create interactive reports and gain valuable insights.

Microsoft

With Workday Prism Analytics, you can bring data in at scale from any source and prepare, analyze, and securely share it with your organization. The result? You gain all the insights you need to drive better business outcomes.

Workday

Sample Customers

Accenture Adidas Aetna AIG Airbus Alibaba Allstate Amazon American Express Aon AT&T Audi Bank of America BASF Bayer Berkshire Hathaway Boeing Coca-Cola Comcast Cisco Coca-Cola Dell Disney Emirates Equinix FedEx Ford GE Google H&M Home Depot Honda IBM Intel JPMorgan Chase Kellogg's Kroger L'Oréal McDonald's Merck MetLife Microsoft Nike Oracle P&G PepsiCo Procter & Gamble Prudential Financial SAP Siemens Snapchat Spotify Starbucks Target Toyota T-Mobile Unilever Visa Walmart WeWork World Bank Xerox

Denny's

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Power BI vs. Workday Prism Analytics

September 2025

Free Report: Microsoft Power BI vs. Workday Prism Analytics

Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Power BI vs. Workday Prism Analytics and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.

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