Platforms
Power BI
Microsoft's reporting and dashboard platform. A first report is quick to build, and most of the effort goes into the data model and the agreed definitions behind it.
Part of Cloud, Data & AI
Power BI is Microsoft's platform for connecting to data sources, modelling the relationships between them and publishing interactive reports and dashboards.
Where it fits
Finance and operations teams that already work in Excel usually find it familiar, which helps adoption. It connects to many common business data sources, supports row-level security so different users see different parts of the same report, and shares reports through Microsoft 365, which many organisations already use.
Where the work goes
A first dashboard is quick to build. Most of the effort goes into the data model: defining measures consistently, matching identifiers across systems, and agreeing what a term like "active customer" means, since two departments often define it differently. Reports built on a model that has not been reconciled can show different numbers for the same thing, and users then stop trusting them.
Its limits
Self-service makes reports easy to create. Without ownership, naming rules and shared definitions, an organisation can end up with many similar reports that disagree. Licences are priced per user or per capacity, which affects cost as the audience grows.
How we use it
We agree definitions with the departments involved and build a shared data model before the reports, and we give each published report a named owner.