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I'm new to Acumatica and have been using Power BI for a couple years. At first I was excited to hear that Power BI was the reporting tool of choice for Acumatica.
But as I'm learning about Acumatica's Report Designer, Pivot Tables, and Dashboard, I'm wondering what Power BI brings to the table now that Acumatica tools can't do.
Do you see any extra value that Power BI adds to Acumatica?
Full Disclosure: I'm a consultant new to Acumatica. I'm checking into the business opportunity potential for Acumatica and Power BI.
Great question Clark. My personal views have been evolving on this, but here is my current response.
Acumatica's Report Designer is really best for printed reports, AKA "traditional" reports. It's more time consuming to create reports with Report Designer because you have to care about formatting.
Acumatica's Inquiries, Pivot Tables, and Dashboards can be used as "Business Intelligence Light", AKA "modern" reports. Also, the data is live. These tools are good for the "questions that you have thought of already."
Power BI is full blown Business Intelligence. This is good for "the questions that you have not thought of yet." Power BI is not just designed to answer your first question, but the questions that come afterwards. You can easily slice and dice to explore the data, answering questions that come up as you move along. But, the data is not live though, nor should it be in a situation that is suited for true analysis.