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Everything you need to know before we start working together.
What is Microsoft Power BI?
Microsoft Power BI is a business intelligence tool that connects to your data sources — whether that’s a spreadsheet, a CRM, accounting software, or something more complex — and transforms it all into interactive dashboards and reports you can actually act on. It’s part of the Microsoft Fabric ecosystem and includes automated refreshes, advanced security, AI visuals, and a mobile app. Two key versions: Power BI Desktop for building reports, and the Power BI service for sharing them across your organisation.
What does a Power BI Consultant do?
A Power BI consultant takes the pain out of your reporting. We handle requirements gathering, data analysis, Power BI development, and user training — so your business ends up with a reporting solution that’s accurate, automated, and built around the way you actually work.
How does Power BI licensing work?
Microsoft offers four tiers:
- Power BI Free** (individual use, limited sharing),
- Power BI Pro (full collaboration and sharing), **Power BI Premium Per User** (advanced analytics per user), and
- Power BI Embedded** (for embedding analytics into your own apps). We’ll recommend the right fit for your business as part of the engagement.
What is Microsoft Fabric?
Microsoft Fabric is Microsoft’s unified data platform for data engineering, data integration, data warehousing, data science, real-time analytics and business intelligence. It brings these capabilities together in one environment, so organisations can store, prepare, analyse and report on data without stitching together multiple separate tools.
Will my data stay secure?
Our Power BI developers work entirely within your Microsoft 365 environment — your data never leaves your organisation or gets stored anywhere external. We configure User Access Management so you control who sees what, and we recommend a broader cyber security review as standard best practice.
What does it cost?
On Report uses a fixed-price model for all Power BI consulting projects — no nasty surprises mid-project. You’ll receive a detailed proposal before we start, with every cost clearly outlined. Ongoing support is available on a monthly retainer.
How long does a Power BI project take?
The timeframe for a Power BI project depends on its scope, complexity, and the number of data sources involved. Smaller projects can often be completed in as little as four weeks, while larger and more complex implementations may take six months or longer. During the initial consultation, we’ll assess your requirements and provide a tailored timeline based on your specific needs.
How messy does my data need to be before it's a problem?
Honestly? It can be pretty messy and we can still work with it. Data quality is something we assess as part of every engagement and factor into our approach. We’ll tell you upfront what we’re working with and what it means for the project.
How involved does my team need to be?
Business Intelligence (BI) is the process of turning raw business data into insights that actually inform decisions. Power BI is the tool we use to do that — and it’s very good at it.
What other tools do you work with?
We work with a wide range of data sources and platforms that we connect into Power BI and Microsoft Fabric as part of our data analytics consulting engagements. These include Xero, Salesforce, Microsoft Excel, Google Analytics, Google Sheets, SharePoint, Azure SQL Database, Microsoft Fabric, SQL Server, Dynamics 365, Active Campaign, Pipedrive, Snowflake, PostgreSQL, MySQL, Databricks, Oracle Database, Google BigQuery, Dataverse, Azure Data Lake Storage, Azure Blob Storage, Asana, Calendly, Projectworks, Xeppo, LoanSphere, WorkSorted, REST APIs and CSV files. If your data lives in a platform not listed here, get in touch — chances are we can connect it.
What is Business Intelligence?
Business Intelligence (BI) is the process of collecting, connecting and analysing data from across your business to produce insights that help you make smarter decisions. Rather than relying on gut feel or manually pulling reports together in spreadsheets, BI gives you a live, visual view of how your business is actually performing — across revenue, operations, capacity, client activity or whatever matters most to you. Tools like Microsoft Power BI sit at the centre of most modern BI setups, turning raw data from your business systems into interactive dashboards your whole team can read and act on. Good business intelligence doesn’t just tell you what happened — it helps you understand why, and what to do next.
Can we use AI with our data and still meet privacy obligations?
Yes. AI solutions built on Microsoft technologies can be configured to align with your privacy, security and compliance requirements. Your data remains protected within Microsoft’s secure environment, is not used to train public AI models, and access can be managed through your existing governance and permission controls.
How can we use AI to get insights from our data?
AI can help your team uncover insights from business data using simple, natural-language questions. Built on Microsoft technologies, these solutions provide answers from your governed data while respecting existing user permissions and security controls.