Power BI Consulting & Microsoft Stack

Power BI reports that were fast on day one and take 45 seconds to load today

This is the most common Power BI engagement we run. A report that was built on a small dataset and published quickly becomes the foundation for more reports, more data, and more users — and nobody redesigned the data model to handle the growth. The symptoms are slow load times, timeout errors on refresh, and users who have given up waiting and gone back to Excel. We run a full diagnostic — Import vs. DirectQuery configuration, DAX measure structure, relationship cardinality, aggregation table setup — identify the root causes, and deliver a remediation plan. Most environments we work with achieve a 3× to 7× load time improvement without rebuilding the reports themselves.

You are migrating from Tableau or Qlik to the Microsoft stack

A platform migration done correctly requires architectural redesign — not a 1:1 report translation. Tableau workbooks often have calculated fields that map poorly to DAX; Qlik data models use associative logic that has no direct equivalent in Power BI's filter context model. We redesign the data model from scratch for Power BI's query engine, rebuild the measure library using proper DAX patterns, and reconstruct the reports taking advantage of what Power BI does well rather than trying to recreate what the previous platform did. We also manage the change process — user training, migration sequencing, and parallel running — so that the transition does not disrupt business reporting during the switchover.

Finance and ops report different numbers from the same Power BI environment

Measure inconsistency is a semantic layer problem. It happens when different reports calculate the same metric differently — different filter logic, different date intelligence patterns, different handling of nulls or inactive relationships. The result is that the same underlying data produces different numbers depending on which report you look at, and nobody can agree on which one is right. We design and implement a certified metrics layer using Power BI's semantic model: a single set of governed measure definitions that every report in the environment draws from. One definition of revenue, one definition of customer count, one definition of gross margin — enforced at the model level so that no individual report can override it.

You are evaluating or migrating to Microsoft Fabric

Fabric represents a significant architectural shift and the decision to move should be driven by a clear business case, not by Microsoft's marketing timeline. We run a Fabric readiness assessment covering your current Azure service footprint, your data volume and query patterns, your Power BI capacity utilisation, and your team's ability to operate a Fabric environment. Where the business case is clear — particularly for organisations with high Azure spend across Synapse, ADF, and Power BI Premium — we design the migration path and deliver it in phases with no service interruption. Where the business case is not yet clear, we tell you that too.

Your Power BI environment has grown beyond what your team can manage

Power BI environments that start as a single workspace for one team routinely grow into dozens of workspaces, hundreds of datasets, and thousands of reports — often without any governance structure. The result is duplicate datasets, orphaned reports with no clear owner, broken data refresh jobs that nobody notices until a board presentation fails, and security configurations that have never been audited. We run a full environment audit, design a governance framework appropriate for your organisation's size and risk profile, and either implement it ourselves or work alongside your team to implement it. This is also the starting point for managed service — we cannot manage what we have not audited.

You need Power BI embedded in a customer-facing application

Embedded Power BI — publishing reports inside your own application for customer or partner access — has a different architecture and licensing model than internal Power BI deployments. The licensing options (Embed for your organisation vs. Embed for your customers) have very different cost structures at scale, and the authentication architecture (service principal vs. master user) affects your security model significantly. We design and implement embedded analytics correctly from the start — the right licensing model for your usage volume, a service principal authentication architecture, row-level security that maps to your application's user model, and performance optimisation for embedded load patterns.