Häufig gestellte Fragen
What is Microsoft Power BI?
Microsoft Power BI is a business intelligence and data visualisation platform that turns data from different sources into interactive reports and dashboards. It belongs to the Microsoft Power Platform and is used both as a free desktop tool (Power BI Desktop) for modelling and as a cloud service (Power BI Service) for sharing and refreshing reports. In the ERP context, Power BI typically serves as an analytical layer on top of operational systems and makes key figures from accounting, sales, warehousing and production analysable. Since 2024, Power BI has also been embedded as a workload in the overarching Microsoft Fabric data platform.
What does Power BI cost and how do Free, Pro and Premium Per User differ?
Power BI Free allows you to create reports for your own use, but not to share them freely with other users. Power BI Pro is the standard for team collaboration and, since the price adjustment of April 2025, costs around 12 euros per user per month (around 14 US dollars, plus VAT, with annual billing), while Premium Per User (PPU) at about 21 euros per user per month (around 24 US dollars) additionally offers features such as paginated reports, more refreshes per day and AI capabilities. For larger user counts, a capacity licence via Microsoft Fabric (F-SKU) is more economical, since from the F64 tier upwards pure report viewers only need a free licence. The prices quoted here are list prices and can vary depending on contract, region and Microsoft 365 bundling.
Can Power BI read data from SAP, Microsoft Dynamics or other ERP systems?
Yes, Power BI ships with native connectors for numerous sources, including SAP BW and SAP HANA, Microsoft Dynamics 365 and widely used databases such as SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL and PostgreSQL. In total, several hundred data sources are available, and systems without a specific connector can be integrated via ODBC, OData or a REST API. In practice, many organisations do not access the ERP directly for performance and consistency reasons, but rather an upstream data warehouse. In any case, reliable analyses require clean master data maintenance in the source system.
What is the difference between DirectQuery and import mode?
In import mode, the data is loaded into the Power BI data model and stored there, which enables fast analyses but keeps the data only as current as the last scheduled refresh. With a Pro licence, up to eight scheduled refreshes per day are possible, and with Premium Per User up to 48. With DirectQuery, by contrast, the data is not stored but read from the source system in near real time with every query, so the analyses are always up to date but the source system is put under greater load. Which mode is appropriate depends on data volume, the required freshness and the resilience of the source; in composite models, both approaches can also be combined.
What are Power Query and DAX used for in Power BI?
Power Query is the tool for data preparation and uses the M formula language to clean raw data, rename columns, set data types and join tables before they enter the data model. DAX (Data Analysis Expressions), on the other hand, is the formula language for calculations within the finished data model, for example for key figures such as revenue totals, contribution margins or period-over-period comparisons. Put simply, Power Query shapes the data, while DAX defines the analytical calculations on top of it. This separation of transformation and modelling resembles the classic principle of an ETL process and is central to traceable, maintainable reports.
How do Power BI and Microsoft Fabric relate to each other?
Microsoft Fabric is an overarching data platform introduced in 2023, into which Power BI has been embedded as a dedicated workload since 2024; alongside it sit building blocks such as Data Factory, Data Engineering and Data Science. All Fabric components access a shared data store called OneLake, so Power BI reports can work directly with centrally held data without copying it. Power BI remains usable as a standalone product, but many newer features, including AI assistants such as Copilot, require a paid Fabric capacity (F-SKU). Microsoft is gradually shifting the former Premium capacities (P-SKUs) to Fabric capacities, which medium-term licence planning should take into account.
Power BI or SAP Analytics Cloud - which platform is the better fit?
Both platforms cover business intelligence tasks but set different priorities, and neither is better or worse across the board. Power BI is usually cheaper and particularly tightly integrated into the Microsoft ecosystem of Microsoft 365, Azure and Dynamics, while SAP Analytics Cloud sits closer to SAP data models and has strengths in planning, budgeting and forecasting. The choice depends above all on the existing system landscape, the available know-how and the integration requirements. In larger SAP-using organisations, both tools are frequently deployed in parallel, since Power BI makes free-form analysis easier while SAP Analytics Cloud handles SAP-centric planning.