Power BI is a cloud based analytics platform offering a suite of self-service business intelligence tools. It enables you to: 1. Connect to a wide range of applications and data sources to connect live and/or import data into the service 2. Powerful data transformation tools to clean, shape, and enrich your data ready for analysis 3. A high performance in-memory modelling engine that facilitates high speed interactive analysis 4. The DAX formula language for defining context rich calculations, metrics, and KPIs 5. A comprehensive range of built in rich visualisations along with a marketplace of extended visualisations and infographics and an open source custom visual SDK.

What are the core components of Power BI?

The main components of Power BI are: - powerbi.com (The Power BI Service) - Power BI Desktop - build models and reports - Power BI Gateway - bridge between on-premises source data and powerbi.com - Power Query Editor - clean, shape and combine data - Power BI Semantic Model - structured business model with tables, relationships, measures, calculations - DAX - formula language used to create measures and calculated columns - Reports - report pages and visualisations - Dashboards - collections of visuals pinned from reports - Workspaces & Apps - collaboration and sharing of reports, dashboards and datasets

What are the benefits of working with a consultancy like PTR?

When you partner with us, you gain access to the decades of collective experience of our entire team to support you in making the most of your people, data, and technology. Our collaborative approach and absolute commitment to transparency, knowledge sharing, and client owned solutions, means we very much work with you rather than for you, and we would like you to see us as an extension of your team. The Return on Investment can often be directly compared to that of recruiting an internal hire - by working with us, the knowledge and skills of our whole team are there on tap, as much or little resource as you need, with little or no long-term commitment. Once you have matured your capability, it may well be that we can support you recruiting that internal hire a little further down the line.

How much does a Power BI project cost?

We have a series of starter sprint packages that start from £2,500. For larger projects, we can scope these after an initial discovery process or worked on retained service basis for longer term engagements with more fluid requirements.

Do we need Fabric to work with Power BI?

No. Many organisations run Power BI with Pro licences alone. You need a Fabric capacity for features like Copilot, larger models, embedded analytics, and sharing with free users.

How does Fabric integrate with Power BI?

Power BI is one of Fabric’s workloads. Semantic models can read data straight from OneLake lakehouses and warehouses via Direct Lake, and the whole estate shares one capacity, security model and set of AI features such as Copilot and data agents.

Where are your consultants based?

Our in-house team of full-time consultants are all based in the UK, with our offices and training centre based in Wokingham, just outside Reading. The vast majority of our delivery work takes place remotely, taking full advantage of cloud based technologies to provide the most flexible service possible. We do also love to get out and meet people in person though, and are very happy to join you onsite at your own premises as requirements suit.

Our Power BI Premium capacity is up for renewal. What do we do?

Premium capacity is being replaced by Fabric capacity at renewal. We'll size the right Fabric capacity from your actual usage and move your workspaces across.

Can Copilot answer questions about our data?

Yes, on a paid Fabric capacity, but the quality of its answers depends on your semantic model. Clear names, descriptions and agreed measures make the difference.

Microsoft Power BI Consultancy Services

Reports that people use, trust, and act on

We've been building BI solutions for over 35 years and working with Power BI since its launch in 2015. Whether its a single report done properly or enterprise-wide reporting, our consultants design and build solutions that will be used and trusted.

Talk to our team

What is Power BI?

Power BI is Microsoft's business intelligence platform, providing a set of tools for you to connect to your data in all sorts of places, model it into a form that means something to you and your business, and share it through visually engaging and interactive reports and dashboards that enable users to answer their own questions quickly and turn insight into action.

In recent years, the Power BI ecosystem has been expanded with Microsoft Fabric, a powerful unified data platform where Power BI semantic models and reports can now sit atop an enterprise data platform that is managed and licensed within the same environment.

Running Power BI Premium? Premium capacity is being replaced by Fabric capacity at renewal. See what the move involves.

The platform continues to develop and grow quickly. Copilot can now help users build and question reports, data agents can answer questions in plain English, and reports can write data back to source systems. What hasn't changed is that all of this depends on a well-designed semantic model and data people trust, which is where we spend most of our time.

How can PTR help?

Report & Dashboard Design

Clear, consistent reports built around the decisions your people make.

Semantic Modelling

One trusted model and agreed measures, so everyone sees the same numbers.

Embedded Analytics

Put live Power BI reports inside your own app or customer portal.

Copilot & AI in Power BI

Get your models ready for Copilot, so plain-English questions get answers you can trust.

Health Check & Governance

Bring a sprawling estate back under control: faster, secure and safely deployed.

Training & Mentoring

Skill up your team alongside the project, from first report to advanced DAX.

Where do we start?

Power BI is a very capable and accessible platform and you may not need as much as you think to get started. If your requirements are already well defined and relatively simple, one of our Power BI starter sprints may be a good place to get you started for some quick wins.

Spreadsheet to Power BI

4 DAYS

£5,000

Your Excel report rebuilt as a Power BI report with a proper semantic model, scheduled refresh and a one-hour handover.

Price based on

One spreadsheet report
Up to 4 report pages

Report Makeover

2 DAYS

£2,500

Improve the design of an existing report for clarity, layout, navigation, consistency, and accessibility.

Price based on

One report
Up to 5 pages
No model changes

Brand Theme & Template

2 DAYS

£2,500

A corporate theme file, a report template and a one-page style guide so every new report starts on-brand.

Price based on

One theme
One template
Derived from brand guidelines

Performance Optimisation

3 DAYS

£3,750

A slow report diagnosed and fixed, with before-and-after load times and a short list of further recommendations.

Price based on

One report
One semantic model

Row-Level Security

3 DAYS

£3,750

Security roles built into your model so each person sees only their data, tested per role and documented.

Price based on

One semantic model
Up to 3 roles

Copilot Readiness

4 DAYS

£5,000

A semantic model prepared for Copilot and data agents, tested against your top questions, with a plan for replacing Q&A.

Price based on

One semantic model
Requires a paid Fabric capacity.

Can't see what you need? Book a free discovery call and we'll scope exactly what you need with you.

Which Power BI Architecture Is Right For You?

When we're looking at building your BI practice more comprehensively, we need to think a little more strategically and think about the platforms that may be required to support Power BI working effectively. We work with you to make the most of your knowledge of your business and your vision of what you would like to achieve from your data so that we can propose a scalable and sustainable solution that you can feel confident supporting for the long term.

Power BI Only

Data preparation, modelling, and reports all built in Power BI, so it stays simple and low cost.

Suitable for a small business, or a team or department with a few data sources and simple refresh requirements.

Power BI & Microsoft Fabric

Storage, preparation and reporting all under one roof, with the speed, scale, and feature set of an enterprise data platform.

Suitable for organisations bringing many sources together and needing more than Power BI alone, but without dedicated IT and infrastructure support.

Power BI & Azure

Power BI sits as the reporting layer over an Azure data warehouse or lake with a tailor made, modular approach and consumption based pricing.

Suitable for organisations adding a reporting layer to existing data platform, or with infrastructure teams that can take advantage of more modular design patterns.

Not sure which is right for you? Book a free discovery call and we can help you compare the options.

Technologies

We specialise in building data solutions in the Microsoft ecosystem. We have been a Microsoft partner since 2005, currently holding Solution Partner designation for Data & AI (Azure), with certifications held across the team in Microsoft Fabric, Azure, and Power BI so you can be confident that our knowledge and skills have been tried and tested.

Learn more

Find out more about some of the technologies you might need to work with alongside Power BI.

Microsoft Fabric

Microsoft Fabric is a unified analytics platform, an evolution of several existing Microsoft analytics products consolidated into a single administrative environment and licensing model which makes licensing, development, and administration much simpler.

Microsoft Azure

Azure is a public cloud offering from Microsoft. With an ever expanding marketplace of components and services available, you can build tailor-made data platform solutions precisely to your specification.

Microsoft Purview

Microsoft Purview helps organisations understand, protect, and govern their data wherever it lives.

Why choose PTR?

We have been working with Power BI since its launch, and with Excel and SQL based business intelligence solutions for many years before that. Our consultants work across the whole data journey, from extracting the data out of your business systems, to presenting it on the page and everything in between. Training and knowledge share are baked into everything we do so we build in a way that your team can understand, maintain, and develop further over time.

How do we work with you?

Whether it's purely strategic advice, implementation and development work to spec, fractional business intelligence support, or a fully outsourced data function, we offer a range of flexible engagement patterns to suit every business, budget, and need.

Pay As You Go

DAY RATE

£1,250/day or £200/hour

Flexible delivery as and when you need it

No Commitment
Time and Materials
Use us when you need us

Fixed Project Fee

FROM

£2,500

Everything locked in up front

Fixed Deliverables
Fixed Fee
Clear timescales

Retained Service

FROM

£1,095/month

Cost effective and flexible resource augmentation

12 Month Agreement
Minimum 1 day/month
Discounted day rate
Predictable monthly billing
Flexible delivery
Easy top-up
Discounted training

What does this look like for you?

Everyone is different so we tailor our approach to reflect that by listening to you, understanding where you're starting, where you're aiming for, and what your priorities are. This is just an example of what a typical journey often looks like with us, yours may be different but the starting point is the same - a chat!

1 Hour - An introductory call with one of our solution architects to learn about your requirements and help us identify the best next steps for you.

Typically 3, 5, or 10 days - A deep dive investigation of your business systems and data estate, your people and their skills, and your business needs and aspirations. We use this to put together a solid technical strategy and implementation plan for you.

Typically 5 Days - Particularly with larger projects, it is useful to demonstrate the technical feasibility and business value of a project before committing to long term spend. Not always necessary, but can help to firm up some variables and to measure consumption demands which can be difficult to predict in cloud environments.

Typically 10-20 Days - This really will be different for everyone and can vary widely, but we aim to work in short cycles that deliver quick results with scope for iterative onward development and flexibility to change requirements.

Typically 3-5 Days/Month - Once people get an appetite for data, it tends to keep growing and with it, requirements keep evolving. Our retainer service enables you to keep a highly skilled data team on hand to respond to those changing requirements under a predictable billing model to suit your budget.

Free Discovery Workshop

Data Discovery Project

Proof of Concept/Value (PoC/PoV)

Minimum Viable Product (MVP)

Retained Consultancy Service