Power BI is a reporting and data analytics tool from Microsoft. It can access many different data sources and present that data back in a meaningful and useful way to make better business decisions. It is mobile enabled so you can run it and access it on just about any type of device. Reports can be designed to be real-time or they can pull from a static data source such as a Data Warehouse that gets updated on a scheduled basis.
Industry evaluators such as Gartner and Forrester continually rank Power BI as innovative leaders in the Business Intelligence segment. Gartner recognizes Microsoft as a Leader for the thirteenth consecutive year in the Gartner 2020 Magic Quadrant for Analytics and Business Intelligent Platforms. Forrester recognizes Microsoft as a Leader in The Forrester Wave™: Enterprise BI Platforms (Vendor-Managed), Q3 2019.
Power BI Report Pack
There are two primary offerings of Power BI. Power BI Desktop, which is free, and Power BI Pro. The Desktop version allows you to access data from hundreds of supported on-premise and cloud-based sources, such as Dynamics 365 Business Central, Dynamics GP, Azure SQL DB, Excel, and SharePoint. Ensure it’s always up to date with automated, incremental refreshes.
Power BI Desktop enables you to develop deep, actionable insights for a broad range of scenarios. Power BI Pro is the full version of Power BI, which means it comes complete with the ability to use Power BI for both building dashboards, reports and unlimited viewing, sharing and consumption of your created reports (and reports shared by others) which is not possible with Power BI Desktop.
For large corporations or enterprises there is Power BI Premium which can run on high end servers in the cloud. This is used for very large data sets and complex reporting requirements. The fee can be several thousands of dollars per month to run the application.
Which solution is right for you? The free version (Power BI Desktop) will serve you well if you do not need to share reports with other users; but mainly just use for your own reporting environment. It also has a storage limit of 1 GB. Power BI Pro allows you to publish and share reports with other licensed users of Power BI Pro. Each licensed user gets up to 10 GB of storage. Power BI Premium is fully functional like Power BI Pro but adds storage of up to 100 TB and allows datasets of up to 50 GB.
Instead of designing reports from scratch; one option is to purchase pre-designed reports and analytics from a software publisher. This is a good way for you to get a good start on Power BI reporting and then building off the solution with your own reports.
We have a preferred business partner in ETL Source that we work with. They deliver pre-packaged Power BI reports for accessing your data in Dynamics GP or Dynamics 365 Business Central.
The REPORT PACK for Dynamics GP, NAV and BC is a suite of 100+ pre-built, interactive Dashboard Reports that give you a 360-degree view of your Dynamics NAV, Business Central and GP data at the click of the mouse. The REPORT PACK features Multi Year Reporting, Trend Analysis, Forecasting, Powerful Data Insights and Data Analytics.
At a fraction of the cost of outdated EXCEL based BI reporting products on the market today, the REPORT PACK is a cost effective, powerful, elegant and state of the art BI /AI reporting solution. All EXCEL based BI reporting products lack the AI – Data Insights, Data Analysis and Question & Answer functionality that are standard in Power BI and form the basis for real Business Intelligence.
Create and publish Power BI – REPORT PACK Dashboards to your team or your entire organization. Your REPORT PACK includes pre-built, interactive dashboards reports, KPIs, and datasets that provide every user with a personalized view of their business metrics that matter most. Display your Dashboards in real time on any screen or device.
For more information on how we can help you get started with Power BI please contact Eric Sheehan directly at esheehan@ott-inc.com or 651-262-2622.