Excel vsPower BI - Which Tool Is Right for Your Business?

Written by Janson Delaney, Business Automation & Analytics Manager.

Why am I writing this blog?

A significant amount of my work is helping take people out of excel for tracking core business processes onto a more robust, secure, and scalable software solution. Do I hate excel? Not at all. My first lines of ‘code’ came from learning excel formulas and that helped me understand statistics. So, in part I owe a great amount of gratitude to excel. However, excel is widely misused so I want to share when to use it and not to use it.

The Basics- Let’s get first principles down:

Excel: Traditional spreadsheet tool for data entry, calculation, and basic ad hoc visualization with a familiar interface.

Power BI: Dedicated business intelligence platform designed specifically for data visualization and interactive dashboards.

Great, now what are the key differences? Who has more horsepower?

• Data Handling

  • Excel: Limited to ~1 million rows per sheet

  • Power BI: Handles millions of rows with cloud storage

• Data Connections

  • Excel: Basic connectivity requiring manual processes

  • Power BI: 100+ native connectors with DirectQuery for real-time updates

As you can see Power BI is much more robust in data connections and handling large data sets. If you wanted to create an org wide data visual Power BI is the way to go, if you want to create a simple pivot table to help you understand data for personal uses, excel is a much faster and accessible approach

Lets talk about security, our favorite topic

• Data Security

  • Excel: Sharing typically exposes all data

  • Power BI: Row-level security and granular permissions

• Data Integrity

  • Excel: Multiple versions, stale data issues

  • Power BI: Single version of truth, automatic updates

• Collaboration

  • Excel: File-based sharing with version control challenges

  • Power BI: Cloud-based central repository with simultaneous access

    
    

One of the most glaring security flaws I see companies face is how the share sensitive financial data by attaching spreadsheets to email. With just one wrong click you can accidentally send this information elsewhere.

Power BI on the other hand has robust security sharing and even audit logs to track what are trusted users are doing with data (Track user activities in Power BI - Power BI | Microsoft Learn)

Cost Comparison... SHOW ME THE MONEY

• Cost

  • Excel: Included in Office 365

  • Power BI: Free Desktop version; Pro $14/user/month

  Personal Preferences

My favorite part about Power BI is the Integration Approach. In Power BI you can connect multiple systems (CRM, accounting, operations, etc) to create one unified picture of your organizations data.

Summary

• Choose Excel for:

  • Small, simple datasets

  • Quick, ad-hoc analysis

  • Financial modeling

  • Single-user workflows

• Choose Power BI for:

  • Large, complex datasets

  • Multiple data sources

  • Organization-wide sharing

  • Regular data updates

  • Security requirements

Both tools have their place in modern data visualization. The best approach for most organizations is thoughtful integration of both tools, leveraging each for what it does best.