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Analytics for everyone, from anywhere. That’s Tableau’s marketing pitch. With good reason if I may add. After all, it does allow businesses to quickly, safely and seamlessly connect, visualize and share data without people needing programming skills to do so. Often called a revolutionary new approach to business intelligence (BI), Tableau provides a flexible, end-to-end platform to see and understand business data—from connection through collaboration.

Given this backdrop, you’re probably wondering why I’m writing about the “why” and “how” of an increasing count of businesses migrating to Microsoft Power BI from Tableau. My reason—establish the rationale behind why this shift should be made.

All roads lead to Power BI

Did you know that Power BI was, from the very start, designed for non-technical users? The intent—give business professionals across the board access to critical data; a privilege once reserved for only IT and data personnel.

Despite Tableau’s strong presence in the market, Power BI’s adoption as the preferred cloud-based SaaS data analytics and BI solution since its 2014 launch has spiked because it is:

  • User friendly
  • Feature rich
  • Cost effective

It also helps that Power BI:

  • Enables companies to gain never-gained-before insights from their data
  • Provides a greater number of personnel with better access to higher volumes of information
  • Helps businesses establish a data-driven culture

That said, most companies find themselves intimidated at the very thought of migrating to a new platform. Despite knowing that Power BI will give them access to advanced features, enable better integration options, and deliver greater customization capabilities that’ll take their data visualization to the next level. Despite the many challenges (illustrated below) they face with Tableau.

At WinWire, we handhold companies across their entire journey of shifting from Tableau to Power BI through the following four-pronged approach:

WinWire Power BI Services

Consulting & AssessmentIntegration &  MigrationDashboard  ImplementationPower BI Governance
Roadmap definitionArchitectureBest practices for dashboard buildAdministration
BI / Visualization ArchitectureModel design and buildFactory ModelSecurity and Access
Mockups focused on business personas and end user experienceIntegrate with multiple sourcesBusiness user enablementEnvironment Health check
Migrate from other technologiesInsights and Analytics developmentSharing and Publishing practices / guidelines
Self ServiceIT and Business Collaboration

How does the WinWire team execute Tableau to Power BI Migration?

A picture is worth a thousand words. That’s why I’m inclined towards explaining the migration process we follow at WinWire through the below mentioned infographic instead of delivering a text-heavy ‘wordlogue.’

tableau to power bi migration

Why use Power BI over Tableau?

Listed below are the top six reasons why I think it’s a good idea to make the move to Power BI (apart from benefitting from reduced time-to-market, higher revenue, and enhanced customer service):

  • Gets started quickly – Power BI is an extremely versatile, easy-to-use BI solution primarily because of its simple user interface that’s similar to Microsoft Excel. It does not need technical expertise – or training – to operate, and it can integrate with data sources of all kinds (be it an Excel spreadsheet or a collection of cloud-based/ on-premises hybrid data warehouses).
  • Increases business user productivity – Power BI’s interactive, immersive dashboards save time by giving business users faster access to important information in real time. Viewers solve problems and identify opportunities quickly. Studies have shown average savings to be ~1.25 hours per week, with composite organizational efficiencies hovering around the $3.6 million mark.
  • Reduces total cost of ownership (TCO) – Power BI gives a wide spectrum of users access to visual data sources in minutes, which helps in its customization, analysis and visualization. In other words, Power BI not only democratizes data, but also increases the amount of usable data for users without growing the core IT and analytics team. Forrester reports that the total TCO savings over three years is $2.3 million.
  • Ensures compliance and regulatory needs are met – Power BI empowers companies to build their business on secure data analytics through accurate data segregation. Data security breaches are prevented as a result because users are not able to access information they should not. Not only does data security gets enhanced, but internal and regulatory compliance are also taken care of.
  • Spurs user-driven innovation – Power BI gives companies a much-needed single platform to meet their data analytics needs. It gives users access to ‘powerful semantic models, an application lifecycle management (ALM) toolkit, an open connectivity framework, and fixed-layout, pixel-perfect paginated reports.’ Users receive weekly and monthly updates which contribute to improving Power BI’s features and capabilities.
  • Enhances employee satisfaction – Power BI helps create a data-centric culture within organizations because it promotes data democratization. With employees being able to access more data (than before) and becoming data driven, they feel empowered which translates into higher retention rates.

How to start using Power BI?

Getting started with Power BI is easier than most organizations think. The Power BI software is user friendly, and if you’re accustomed to working on Excel, you’ll find it particularly familiar. If you don’t already have the Power BI software, try it for free to gauge if it suits your requirements. You won’t need a license till the time you want to share your visuals and/ or reports with others or perform more complex tasks.

Tableau to Power BI Migration Automation – WinWire’s value proposition for our customers

Win With Power BI helps enterprises to adopt industry-best visual analytics experiences on Power BI by seamlessly, and rapidly, migrating from existing BI/ reporting solutions leveraging automation toolsets and best practices. The bonus—Licensing costs decrease by up to 75%.

  • Up to 50% reduction in model rebuild efforts in Power BI
  • 25% – 30% reduction in Dashboard build / conversion efforts
  • Innovative Metadata Driven Accelerator driving migration cost savings
  • Rapid business adoption of Power BI through programs such as Dashboard in a Day
  • Ability to embed insights within applications / processes
  • Enable a highly secure, integrated and Analytics capability

Client Success Story – Tableau to Power BI Migration

Customer is a leading faith based integrated health system in North America.

Business Challenge:

  • Performance Issues with Tableau
  • Complex data extracts and workbooks
  • High CPU utilization from data extract queries
  • Slow visualization load times
  • Slow live connections to EDW
  • Huge cost concerns with increasing workloads on Tableau
  • Multiple data sources – Flat files, SQL DB (Provider Data warehouse) and Oracle Enterprise DW
  • Need to migrate within a short window – contract renewal pressures on Tableau licenses

Solution Delivered

  • Migrated and modernized Data estate to Azure data services – Synapse
  • Migrated entire Tableau estate to Power BI in rapid time (< 6 months). License Cost savings at over 40%.
  • Used “Win with Power BI” metadata analysis tool to capture Tableau objects inventory and assessed complexity of migration
  • Optimized and rationalized report and dashboard inventory
  • Rapid build of Power BI data models using best practices
  • Migrated / Rebuilt Power BI reports in Agile iterative delivery model with no impact to BAU
  • Enabled end user adoption of Power BI across the enterprise through programs such as DIAD

To know more about the various success stories, we’ve helped organizations craft vis à vis their migration from Tableau to Power BI, contact us.