What is our primary use case?
I mainly use it for sales analysis. We are in the telecom industry, so on a daily basis, we see a couple of trends in the number of activations of customers and registration, the performance of the dealer, and items like that.
What is most valuable?
Its integration with the Microsoft Office Suite is great. I can easily connect it to any of the Excel or any CSV files, and I can immediately create a dashboard.
It's like the higher level of pivot tables. For the people who mainly use Excel, this is like an advanced version. This is much more flexible and I don't have to train people to use it, as it's very user-friendly compared to Qlik. Qlik needs some expertise and a layman cannot immediately go to Qlik and do stuff unless he understands it. When it comes to Power BI it's a five minutes tutorial, he can definitely understand what needs to be done.
The solution is stable and scalable. So far I don't have any issues, however, it depends on the amount of data we use. I'm just running it on my PC.
The initial setup is straightforward.
The solution is free as it's bundled with Office 365.
What needs improvement?
Maybe they can enhance the UI a bit. Right now, it's very basic, I would say, compared to the MicroStrategy or Qlik.
They could also improve the mobile experience. If people are using this mobile app for BI, they need better performance there. The rendering of the objects, for example, if you create the dashboard on Power BI when someone sees that on the app, it comes in a different format. They can do some enhancements there to standardize it.
Once we expand it as a centralized repository, if I could find much more use cases, that would be ideal. However, now it's very limited in our organization.
For how long have I used the solution?
We don't use the solution filly and don't yet have a license for it. That said, I've had the chance to work with it for more than a year now.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The solution is stable. There are no bugs or glitches and we don't have any trouble with it crashing or freezing. It's reliable and the performance is good.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
My understanding is that the solution is scalable.
I can easily load a billion rows in less than two or three minutes and play around with it. However, I haven't tested on big data files or anything like that.
Right now, we don't have too many users. It's just three to four people as of now, as our primary BI tool is still Qlik Sense. It's only for ad hoc use cases we use Power BI, and just myself and a couple of team members, as well as the BI specialist, that access it.
How are customer service and support?
I've never reached out to technical support in the past. If I run into issues, I tend to Google solutions to find answers to my questions. YouTube is also a good resource if you need information.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We currently use Qlik Sense as our BI product.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is not complex or difficult. It's simple and straightforward.
It took, 10 to 15 minutes, if I remember correctly, to set everything up. It's just a .exe file installing. It's not hard and it's pretty fast.
What about the implementation team?
We did not need a consultant or an integrator to handle the implementation. I just played around a bit with it.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
We don't have a license on Power BI, so we don't publish anything. It's mainly for some ad hoc use cases that we use Power BI format.
Power BI is free; it comes with Office 365.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I've currently looked at MicroStrategy and am in the process of comparing a few other products.
What other advice do I have?
We are just a customer and an end-user.
We are using Power BI, however, not to the full scale. It's still unlicensed as of now, and I'm using desktop versions only.
I don't remember the version, as it comes with Office 365. I didn't give a thought to the version.
From my experience with the desktop version, I'd rate the solution at a nine out of ten.
From my experience, I'd recommend the solution to others.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
*Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.