Many organizations use Power BI to develop self-serve analytics dashboards for their customer needs. If you are unfamiliar with this, Power BI is a business analytics software for building interactive reports that can be shared with users searching for data-driven insights in the organization.
This powerful tool enables your organizational team members to take the right decision by utilizing up-to-the-minute analytics. However, Power BI dashboards have been created for many customers that have offered the chance and learning opportunities to assess the pros and cons of the software. Before understanding its pros and cons, let’s begin to understand the key features of Microsoft Power BI.
What Are The Important Features Of Microsoft Power BI?
There are some top features associated with Microsoft Power BI that include:
- Data visualizations
- Real-time dashboards
- Report authoring
- Reporting
- Collaboration
- Interactive visualization
- Power Query
- Natural-language questions
- Publish to web
- Touch-enable native apps
- Integrations and data sources
- Open and standards-based REST API
After understanding the key functionalities and features of Microsoft Power BI software, let’s move on to know its pros and cons. It has been identified that this software tool has spread in many areas, but some of its services may not fit your organizational needs. Thus, understanding this software’s strengths and weaknesses can help you determine the best suitable BI software for your business.
What Are The Power BI Software’s Strengths
1.Easy To Learn
As many developers are engaged in frequently updating the features of Power BI, it is known to be a new and unique tool. Traditionally, this software was confusing, but now you can find much information about it online in blogs, videos, and others that guide motivated users. Moreover, this software is quite straightforward and creates an interactive dashboard. You can also learn Power BI by gathering knowledge about using Excel formulas and relational databases.
2.Interactive Content
The Power BI software has the capability of self-service and producing interactive content that makes it more unique from other software. Traditionally, creating a set of reports was very complicated and lengthy, whereas a business intelligence (BI) analyst is engaged in updating a regular cadence.
But, the integration of Power BI has made it easy for an analyst to add options for users and build a report to see the results for data subsets. Here, an analyst gets an opportunity to control the collected data and its presentation. On the other hand, a user also gets the flexibility to support modifications. Thus, the whole process becomes very interactive, which encourages exploration.
3.IT Approval
Usually, large companies do not have admin rights to install and download the software as it requires the approval of the IT department. However, the whole process of approval is very hectic. Thus, the introduction of Power BI covers Microsoft’s security policies and licenses, making it easy for users. Here, the use of Microsoft products provides convenience and credentials to the consumers and developers of the reports.
4.Affordable Price
The free version of Power BI is very appealing but requires a paid license. However, this free version is best for a small company with fewer people to use reports. A large company can use this free version to explore Power BI first. If you want to see the dashboard with the free version, then you need to install Power BI and do some additional setup to connect to organizational databases.
5.Good Data Source Connection
This BI software is generally connected with various out-of-the-box data sources as it is easy to connect. Usually, the Power BI connects to various databases without special add-ons or installations, which is considered a plus point for analysts. Here, you can import data directly or use DirectQuery.
6.Usage Metrics
Many organizations face a significant problem in running and maintaining their proliferation of reports. However, BI professionals remove the scream test and let others scream. Here, a Power BI Pro developer can view usage metrics for the reports using the paid version. Likely, BI teams can maintain and support their report by changing and removing them.
As every software can’t be perfect every time, Power BI also has some weaknesses that need to be given special focus.
Also Read: The Top Data Visualization Tools To Make Your Life Easier
What Are The Cons Of Power BI?
1.Missing Basic Features
Power BI has some notable missing features. For instance, a numeric field requires creating a histogram of the values, which is missing from this software and requires a lot of brute force to complete the task. Moreover, a missing feature is selecting the top N categories in a bar chart.
2.Manual Effort
As this software is developed as a point-and-click software, users need to edit the dashboard through drop-down menus and icons. Thus, a Power BI dashboard needs many mouse-clicking in its development process. Moreover, it cannot automate repetitive tasks with code, a major weakness of this software.
3.Complicated Language
Power BI uses DAX language to calculate variables and metrics. This language does not allow the data process to work manually. This DAX programming language is very hard to grasp as it requires many functions testing.
The Power BI software offers affordable pricing with limited human and financial resources to enhance business operations. Moreover, it is easy to use, available in numerous setup options, and highly intuitive and one of the most used tools in Data visualization. Meanwhile, this software has some weaknesses. Thus, this post has clarified its pros and cons to help identify the perfect match for your data analysis and visualization tools.
