Microsoft's BI standard, firmly set in the DACH mid-market. Strong in the M365 ecosystem and on price, but only as good as the data model underneath it.
What is Power BI?
Power BI is Microsoft's self-service BI: dashboards, reports and ad-hoc analysis with an Excel-adjacent feel. In the mid-market it is often already licensed through Microsoft 365, which makes it the default choice of many business teams. Without a modelled warehouse behind it, it degrades fast into CSV-import chaos with twelve truths per KPI.
When it fits, and when it doesn't
Good fit when:
- Microsoft 365 is a given and the license already exists
- business teams should run self-service analysis
- a warehouse stands ready as the single source of truth
Not the right call when:
- the team works outside the Microsoft world
- self-hosting or open source is mandatory
- dashboards are meant to skip the data model
What Datascale builds with Power BI
We decide the architecture, then we build:
- connections to BigQuery or Snowflake, Import vs. DirectQuery chosen deliberately
- a data model with dbt so KPIs are defined once
- DAX standards and naming conventions
- row-level security and workspace governance
- an honest comparison against Metabase and Tableau
The full picture lives in the matching service. We integrate Power BI where it is the best answer for your case, not as an end in itself. Related: Audit Sprint.
