Power BI : what you need to know before making an investment

October 2020

As more and more people become aware of Power BI, and more broadly the Power Stack, and start to consider investment in it, we thought it a good idea to look at some of the key things we ensure our clients consider before puling the trigger on their investment.

Power Bi is an excellent product, arguably the best out there, when used for what is was designed to do, and that is visualisations. However we, and some frustrated  finance departments, are finding there a many people who are sold by the hype, and jump head first into an investment without first understanding some of the limitations. Whilst almost everything can be worked around in one way or another, sometimes these boundaries mean the technical workarounds required to achieve certain outcomes far outweigh the benefits that are achieved.

Here are a few things to consider when evaluating if Power BI is the right product for you.

Power BI is not a standalone solution

Power BI is a fantastic data visualisation tool, but many people fail to realise is that it is just the tip of the iceberg of a ‘family’ of tools that are required to store, transfer, integrate, calculate and present data from multiple data sources. Before you can use the features to build insights in Power BI, you must first develop what can quickly become complicated data models ,or create your own data warehouse.

This can take months to develop, and required specialist technical knowledge, depending on the volume of your business data and complexity of your systems. It can also be a very costly project that can degrade in value over time if not maintained correctly. Custom built data models need to be maintained and be able to  integrate new solutions or upgrade old ones.

The key to being successful with Power BI is the quality and relevancy of your data across your users.

It is not a CPM tool and not really suited for Budgeting, Forecasting and creating Financial Statements – without a lot of work-arounds

One of the more prevalent misunderstandings and the source of frustration for many CFOs, CEOs, and Finance teams across the globe is the fact that Power BI cannot be easily used to build your board-ready financial statements. This is not exactly true, in that it can be done but with a lot of work, but the bottom-line is it is not a CPM tool.

A dashboard is one thing, and something Power BI does a great job at delivering, but paginated reports are a completely different beast. Attractive visualisations help to quickly identify trends and spot anomalies, painting the bigger picture of your business operations – but this doesn’t replace your need for financials or operational details. Financial statements, receivable reports, and anything showing more than the basics will require a completely different set of skills.

Power BI lets you see the big picture, but the smaller details, itemised data and the ability to perform what-if analysis and scenario planning are crucial when trying to make decisions that impact your cash flow and revenues. Additionally, regulatory requirements, banks and lenders, and other sources need you to produce actual financial statements on a timely basis.

Power BI does not enable simple integration of multiple data sources

While adding a data source to Power BI may be a relatively simple and straightforward exercise, combining data from multiple data sources together is something much more complicated. Automating update processes to keep the data valid and current is also not a strength.

Power BI cannot easily handle data normalization for tasks like Master Data Management. When you have things like item numbers, customer numbers, GL accounts, etc. that don’t align perfectly across systems, it creates a huge challenge for those who are not intimately familiar with data modeling. Most businesses don’t employ data scientists and modelers who know how to integrate multiple data sources to effectively manage the data and ensure inputs are valuable and true. As this is a highly sophisticated discipline, it is something even programmers would struggle to manage with any degree of certainty. And this is a huge problem with Power BI – it requires the work of external experts to become the powerful tool that it can be. And that work comes at a price, both relative to time and cash.

If you’re storing data in more than one place (and who isn’t?) then having the use of pre-built connectors and a proper data warehouse is going to be the best path forward for reporting and business analytics. And your data warehouse can feed Power BI; it’s just a matter of whether you have the time and resources to build your own data warehouse.

Creating complex calculations is not that simple or fast

Something as common as a month-to-date or year-to-date calculation is not that simple in Power BI. To perform this type of calculation (and numerous other common ones), you need a date calculator – something that isn’t built into Power BI and isn’t standard. Alternatively, you can use a custom table or DAX, which you would need to build on your own.

This is another example of how Power BI is not always a quick and easy solution to implement but, instead, is a highly sophisticated set of tools that are only as good as the way it’s set up.

A seemingly simple request can take a disproportionate amount of time and effort to build; expecting the product to deliver outside of its confines will only create poor results and wasted resources.

Many EPM/CPM products now provide better and easier Power BI integration. With their data warehousing and integration, and budgeting, forecasting and financial reporting capabilities, CPM/EPM products fill in the missing pieces of the puzzle, whilst enabling you to quickly and easily integrate this data into Power BI to provide the data for your organisations dashboards and visualisations.

So before you decide to invest in Power BI, consider if it alone can provide everything your business requires.