Launched in 2011 under the title Project Crescent, Power BI was released under its current name in 2013. Since then, the platform that describes itself as a “collection of software services, apps, and connectors that work together to turn your unrelated sources of data into coherent, visually immersive and interactive insights” has evolved considerably. Features have been added, removed, and updated almost continuously and it now has a thriving community that provides advice and support. Even though it has solid reviews and is one of the market leaders in the space, it does have a reputation of being complicated. To uncover how this platform really works within the South African business, we chatted to Mithum Singh, the chief services officer at CCI South Africa; Bas Wijne, the co-founder and CEO of BitCord; and Justin Yssel, information manager at CRS Technologies.

“Our environment consisted of very large datasets that were not of a particularly great quality,” says Wijne. “The older tools we were using took a long time before we could visualise anything and even then, we had to rely on internal knowledge to interpret the data. We opted into Power BI because it fits into the Microsoft suite of products and was easy for people to adapt to.”