Power BI v/s Excel

Microsoft markets Power BI as a way to connect and visualize data using a unified, scalable platform that offers self-service and enterprise business intelligence that can help you gain deep insights into data. So, it begs the question: Doesn’t Microsoft Excel do this already?

To answer what makes Power BI different from Excel, ask these five questions:

1. What level of analytics does your organization need?
2. Is collaboration an issue?
3. What is the size of your dataset?
4. Is there a pricing issue?
5. How meaningful are visualizations to your team?

Both Power Excel and Power BI can handle all five requirements, but Power BI is a significant upgrade, for several reasons:

1. Power BI supplies an array of high-level analytical offerings that Excel doesn’t include, such as the ability to create dashboards, key performance indicators (KPI), visualizations, and alerts.
2. Power BI has significant collaboration capabilities, whereas Excel has limited data collaboration options.
3. Though Excel can help when it comes to creating advanced reports if you want to build data models that include predictive and machine learning assets, you have to turn to specific versions of Power BI.
4. There is no single free version of Excel. On the other hand, you can start with Power BI for free. You can also purchase premium alternatives if you need advanced features.

In summary, Power BI integrates business intelligence (BI) and data visualization so that users can create custom and interactive dashboards, KPIs, and reports. Simultaneously, Microsoft Excel is limited in handling data analytics, mathematical operations, or data organization using a spreadsheet. Power BI can extract and format data from more than a single data source type. Because Power BI handles extensive data ingestion, the process by nature is much faster. Furthermore, because Power BI can connect with various data sources, the range of outputs, including dashboards and reports is more interactive, whereas Excel is limited in scope. Above all Power BI is a tool for data visualization and analysis that allows for collaboration, At the same time, Excel limits sharing and data analysis to a limited number of end users.