We compared Microsoft BI and Tableau based on our users reviews in six parameters. After reading the collected data, you can find our conclusion below:
Users generally find the initial setup for Microsoft BI to be simple and effortless, requiring minimal time and effort. In comparison, Tableau's setup process can range from uncomplicated to more intricate, depending on specific circumstances and requirements.
Microsoft BI is highly regarded for its impressive capabilities and adaptability, as well as its capacity to retrieve data from diverse origins and create personalized visuals. On the other hand, Tableau is commended for its ease of use, intuitive design, and proficiency in managing substantial volumes of data.
Both Microsoft BI and Tableau have areas where they can improve. Microsoft BI could enhance its user-friendliness, support, graphical and analytical features, cost, performance, integration, metadata management, visualization capabilities, stability, security, compatibility, data management process, support for product management and customer services, and documentation. On the other hand, Tableau could focus on improving its compatibility, performance, memory data concept, architecture, charting and calculations, modeling techniques, visualization options, integration, customization process, report creation, forecast instrument, GIS features, support for business insights and trend analysis, interface, licensing options, automation, write-back capabilities, drill-down functionality, security measures, workflow, and data modules.
Microsoft BI has a potentially high setup cost, particularly for enterprise-level usage. While some users find the pricing reasonable for desktop use, it becomes costly for larger-scale implementations. In contrast, Tableau's pricing is diverse, with opinions ranging from expensive to cheap. Some users perceive Tableau as expensive, especially for smaller firms, while other tools like Power BI are seen as more affordable. Generally, there is a consensus that Tableau's pricing could be enhanced to maintain competitiveness.
Microsoft BI has been highly praised for its return on investment, with users giving it a perfect rating. It is projected to generate substantial revenue growth and achieve breakeven in a relatively short period of 2-3 years. In contrast, Tableau's specific ROI is uncertain, but it is presumed to be impressive based on existing data. Customers have observed a return on investment within a quicker timeframe of 5-6 months.
The opinions on customer service for Microsoft BI are divided, with some users finding it satisfactory while others believe it needs improvement. On the other hand, Tableau's customer service has had a range of experiences, with some customers having positive ratings and others encountering limitations and difficulties in contacting the right people.
Comparison Results
Microsoft BI is praised for its ease of setup and powerful features, but users find it difficult to learn and use, with weaker graphical and analytical features compared to Tableau. The cost is considered high, and users desire better support, a more user-friendly interface, and improved performance. On the other hand, Tableau's setup can range from simple to complex, but it is highly valued for its user-friendliness and customization options. However, Tableau lacks compatibility with certain tools, has performance issues with large data, and needs improvement in visualization options and integration capabilities. Pricing is also a mixed opinion, with some finding it expensive. Customer support for both products has mixed reviews.
"They should add mobile access."
"It is useful for bringing visualization to data. It calculates counts, ratios, etc."
"It is easy to work with and very chic."
"PowerBi is used to import our production data and generate dashboards, then integrates other Excel sheets to provide managers dashboards. This helps them get insights to make better OEE improvement decisions, mainly where to focus resources. We became able to see indicators from any time frame (day, week, month, or year), then could make better decisions."
"What I like about Power BI is how fast you are able to create dashboards and how fast you are able to fetch the data. You can connect to the database or data source, and then you can design your dashboards very easily."
"It gives you an edge if you are on the Microsoft platform. If you have been using Microsoft products for a long time or if you have the Microsoft infrastructure, this is the right tool for you. It has seamless integration with Microsoft SQL Server and other sources, and you get the best of the three things (SSIS, SSAS, and SSRS) in one suite."
"Microsoft BI is scalable."
"Implementation is very quick and the solution is very user-friendly."
"Tableau's visualization features let you present information insights quickly and practically. So it's something which I prefer with Tableau. In terms of reporting, I have to point out the sheer quality and function of the Tableau server, but the first impression is that it's a great visualization tool."
"There is a lot of APIs available, which means that Tableau can be customized to a large extent."
"Scheduled extract and the multiple connectors are fantastic!"
"This solution has improved insights into quantitative data."
"It allows us to basically understand and evaluate our numbers in an expedient manner."
"The most valuable features are the visualizations, the way they show the combination charts."
"The action feature which Tableau has is very useful for us. If we click on one visualization, it will pass the value to another visualization. That interactivity within different visualizations is the most valuable feature of Tableau."
"It is definitely easy to use. It is intuitive, and more or less, everything can be done from the front end. As such, there is no concept of metadata. You can just take data from a database and start building your own stuff, such as OLAP data warehouse. You don't need extensive metadata modeling like Oracle BI."
"It is kept very current, and there is an update literally every month. However, the interface changes quite randomly with no documentation, which is difficult at the domain and architectural level where you're planning things and engaging the business. Things change frequently, and you wonder where has the button for the new report gone. They should provide better documentation on interface changes. It should be better optimized. It is supposed to be a data integration tool, but it is doing relatively simple queries. It has its limitations. For example, you can only pull a number of columns. So, there is room for optimization on its ability to integrate multiple data sources. The desktop tool is very memory-intensive, and again, this is not documented clearly. It requires a heavy CPU and memory use, and it causes your operating systems to become unstable. I would like to see the ability to create datasets within Power BI. Microsoft is promoting Azure as a cloud solution, but it is dependent upon a desktop component, which seems a little bit deceptive. Data set is the basic element that you report from, but it has to be created on the desktop and then published to the cloud. So, you're in the cloud, and you create a data structure or the data flow, but you can't report from that. You have to leave the cloud, go to your desktop, create the data set on your desktop, and publish it to the cloud. You go back to the cloud and create your report by using that published data set, which is very non-intuitive. If you go to the Microsoft Power BI community, this is a common complaint across the entire community."
"We haven't used it that long and I haven't come across anything that's stood out as needing to be fixed."
"Their technical support can be better. They normally take too long to escalate and resolve a case."
"Microsoft BI comes under pressure when there is a lot of data to be crunched. It gets slower and slower, and the functionality becomes a bit of a problem. The performance goes down with data being fed into the system. The infrastructure requirement also increases if you have to increase the performance. This is the area that can be improved in my opinion. Initially, the product is good, but over the years, when data gets accumulated, it becomes a problem unless the old data is kind of archived and is no longer shown on the visualization. It has a feature by using which a user can query for a report through simple questions to a bot. So, if I want to look for the customer share of revenue by geography, I just simply state that in the chatbot. If I wanted it in a pie chart, then you say, "Please show it to me in a pie chart." It comes out well for basic charts. This feature should be improvised more so that people can very quickly get customized reports on the go."
"If I compare it to Tableau, I'd say the visualizations can be better. We should have multiple options. By that I mean, while there are multiple options for the visualization, the look and feel of the dashboard when you compare to Tableau is on the lower side. Tableau has a much better visualization."
"It seems that the solution could use more analytics to help users draw more contextual business insights. Right now, you need other solutions for that."
"There are some problems with the functionality of this solution. The dashboard is not very user friendly and is quite complicated."
"There are some connector-related issues in their MSBA solution."
"The user experience for less savvy or non-technical people (from my experience)."
"More integration with Python or something related to machine learning would be a good improvement."
"An advanced type of visualization is a bit tricky to create. It has something called a Calculated field, and that sometimes gets a bit difficult to use when you want to create an advanced type of visualization."
"When compared to Power BI, it is less user-friendly."
"Maybe the price could be a bit cheaper, especially if you're a personal developer that uses Tableau just to explore smaller data sets and you're not a company or something like that."
"The tool's OpenAI integration was announced last year. However, it is late. Tableau is a good solution for end customers. However, there are some concerns regarding the stability and performance of its server architecture, including SaaS services. The server side appears unstable, and performance issues are noticeable, often accompanied by unclear error messages."
"The solution does have scalability issues."
"The SQL programming functionality needs to be improved."
Microsoft Power BI is ranked 1st in Reporting with 293 reviews while Tableau is ranked 2nd in Reporting with 290 reviews. Microsoft Power BI is rated 8.0, while Tableau is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Microsoft Power BI writes "A complete ecosystem with an builtin ETL tool, good integrations with python and R, and support of DAX and Power Query (M languages)". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Tableau writes "Provides fast data access with in-memory extracts, makes it easy to create visualizations, and saves time". Microsoft Power BI is most compared with Amazon QuickSight, KNIME, Domo, Oracle OBIEE and MicroStrategy, whereas Tableau is most compared with Amazon QuickSight, Domo, SAS Visual Analytics, SAP Analytics Cloud and Databricks. See our Microsoft Power BI vs. Tableau report.
See our list of best Reporting vendors and best BI (Business Intelligence) Tools vendors.
We monitor all Reporting reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
Sorry to hear you have to move to Report Builder. Tableau is superior by a long shot! Find another gig. Don't go backwards. Move forward with Tableau !
Tableau is more suitable for somebody that is not developer and it's very easy to use and to create great visual presentation. For developers Report Builder would be more domestic.
It is really the outcome and target goals that are achieved with the right set of BI solutions,people using it to add more efficiency and productivity at all fronts is the kind of result you want to see. Tools include human and technology bonded together to produce results, After all it is the function of both parties to work together, collaborate and share resources together. In the human perspective we look at the training and how best we can create solutions . With the BI solution it is the way we distinguish between the existing solutions that will to the best of its capability serve our business interests and requirements.
Current business leadership include the VP of Finance, so determining a business case was and is a problem for him and those directly under him. So is a no my problem.
Thanks,
Rich
Rich- What is it that current leadership perceives as lacking in the current reporting tool set?
Why change if the only benefit is features or a products capabilities?
Can the products features and capabilities be exploited?
By who and when?
How does that make money for the company?
Increased profit?
Cost reduction?
Increased resource utilization?
Fewer days for order to cash?
Reduced collections?
Better on time shipping?
Faster production?
Increased gross margin?
Reduced inventory?
You get the picture. It's the people that make the difference. Not the tool!
What is it that we need to know to grow our business constantly and continuously?
Every tool mentioned can do really great "stuff".
But what "stuff" does your company need?
To answer the initial question: Every change is difficult without buy-in from the stakeholders.
People love change. What they don't like is change without benefit. Perceived or real.
I hope this helps you a little to better meet the challenges you're facing.
I wish you the best.
Reading through the responses from all you knowledgeable persons out there is so very enlightening. It's like sitting in a room and getting your experiences on these tools first hand. Thanks a lot for your inputs, which will help in putting pros and cons for the company to make a trade off and choose over the two.
Rich- What is it that current leadership perceives as lacking in the current reporting tool set?
Why change if the only benefit is features or a products capabilities?
Can the products features and capabilities be exploited?
By who and when?
How does that make money for the company?
Increased profit?
Cost reduction?
Increased resource utilization?
Fewer days for order to cash?
Reduced collections?
Better on time shipping?
Faster production?
Increased gross margin?
Reduced inventory?
You get the picture. It's the people that make the difference. Not the tool!
What is it that we need to know to grow our business constantly and continuously?
Every tool mentioned can do really great "stuff".
But what "stuff" does your company need?
To answer the initial question: Every change is difficult without buy-in from the stakeholders.
People love change. What they don't like is change without benefit. Perceived or real.
I hope this helps you a little to better meet the challenges you're facing.
I wish you the best.
I wouldn't feel too sorry, it is a very good group to work with. After a lot of years working in IT both in the US and Europe one of the things I find interesting is that Americans in business, especially with regard to software, feel they must have the latest, greatest and most feature rich everything when very often being a little behind the bleeding edge gets the job done and costs less. The real issue is to look at the problem being solved and find good enough while keeping an eye on where you are going.
Having said that took a brief look at the link you indicated and I like the fact that it runs on Linux. Thumbs up on that aspect.
Thanks,
Rich