Logi Symphony vs. Microsoft Power BI Embedded

Considering it's price point in the market, Dundas BI offers a lot of functionality. They are constantly adding features and bug fixes which is great, but also means there are always updates to take if you want everything to work as expected. The standard user interface is pretty easy to understand, but it takes a while for developers and power users to become independent of documentation.

Incentivized

The scenario where it shines more is in the treatment of data that is not easily correlated at first sight, it helps to find causes of unsuccess in productive environments. The only thing that is required is to have properly collected data to feed to Power BI, so it won't be useful in environments where the data is not collected with care, since the representations won't be representatives of the reality.

Incentivized

• Project organization from Development to Production, you get a production and development license but I think the best way to do it is with DEV and Prod project in the Production box. Use the development box for testing updates and really crazy things. With the Dev and Prod projects on the same box, you just publish from Dev to Prod and you are done. Users only have access to the Prod projects so no one can mess up what you are working on.
• Security - If you have a hierarchy (subsidiaries, divisions, department, teams) and you want each group to see only their data, then Security hierarchies are for you!
• Dependent filters! What's this you ask? Here is an example of how it can be used, in your company you have departments and who works for what department is in your database. You make a dashboard that has a department filter (only show these departments), a managers filter, and employee filter. Not every manager or employee is in multiple departments usually only one. With dependent filters you can say that the manager and employee filter are dependent on what is selected in the departments filter so when you go to filter them they only show the managers or employees that are part of that department, and you can even it do so employees are not only dependent on department but on manager as well. Then it gets even better as it can be done in reverse as well so when you select a manager then go to the department it only shows the departments he works for (there are better situations where this is more useful).
• It is scriptable! From calculate columns, null replacements, button actions, load actions, hover over events there a way to do what you want.
• They are constantly improving and listens to your suggestions.

Incentivized

• It is very easy to connect multiple data sources for a single report. You can use CSV, Excel, database integration, etc.
• Power Bi supports Python as well, which makes it a lot easier for us as it is known by most of our team.

Incentivized

• Not too many cons for how we use the application. It really is easy and powerful. Very powerful.
• Licensing is one thing that could be looked into. It is simple, but a little confusing. For example, if I get a license today, but a new release comes out tomorrow, it seems that the license doesn't work with the new release. Maybe that is by design, but it would be nice to clearly understand.

• It was a little difficult to work out how to create certain visualisations, but there is extensive online help material to support with this.
• Had some issues with assigning pro licences but these were quickly resolved
• Small learning curve but no more so than similar applications

Incentivized

We are still in the implementation phase, but so far we are finding it to be easy to use and learn. The eLearning courses that they have made available for free, as well as User Forums and other training videos have made even difficult concepts easier to understand.

We have bi-weekly calls with our Success Manager, as well as access to support as needed. Any question that I have had, multiple people have been willing and able to jump on a call to talk me through it, or send an email with the solution

Providing that you have the client's needs well known, creating BI content using Dundas BI is a walk in the park!

We have tested Tableau prior to Dundas BI and though Tableau is a great package in itself, Dundas BI is much more cost-effective for our needs and requirements and hence zeroed in on Dundas BI. We have also tried microstrategy but it has a very dated UI and doesn't suit our needs in today's more modern world

Incentivized

Microsoft Power BI Embedded is already established as a de-facto standard as a business intelligence platform for the enterprise world. It comprises the best features to be delivered for the products being developed by providing a wide range of functionality. For instance, there are supported numerous graphic visualizations of data points such histograms, pie charts, heat maps and so on

• Coming from an SQL based standard delivery model, Dundas BI has provided a fantastic rate of ROI.
• The preparation and delivery time has reduced from weeks to just a few hours.

Incentivized

• Microsoft Power BI has had a positive impact on our business objectives by allowing everyone to better understand the data that is being presented. Some people can process numbers and charts easily, but interactive visualizations can aid visual learners and just makes the dashboard look a lot nicer with the ability to dive deeper into the numbers (through visualizations). Thus, engagement and understanding have improved.
• One negative impact is that there is a rather steep learning curve since Microsoft Power BI's language (DAX/M) can be quite different from traditional Excel. Because of that, either you need to hire people who are specialized in Microsoft Power BI, or you need to account for the fact that they will need to be trained (or take time to learn it). Thus, there can be direct costs from hiring new people, or indirect costs through training/employee taking time to learn the software.
• Another positive impact of Microsoft Power BI is that it got us thinking about how we can be better as an organization in terms of laying out our raw data, organizing data, conducting research into better metrics we can track and report on, etc. Because Microsoft Power BI made the presentation/visualization (+ regular updating/maintenance) part of our dashboard easier for us, we were able to start thinking about additional metrics and additional ways we can improve our reporting.

Incentivized