Companies hire a Microsoft BI consultant when they have eleven dashboards and two of them disagree about last quarter. That is a modeling problem wearing a reporting costume.
Revenue is being aggregated two different ways, a relationship is set to both directions because it fixed a visual eighteen months ago, and the refresh has been failing on Tuesdays since somebody renamed a column.
What a Microsoft BI Consultant Does Before Touching a Visual
The order of work is the whole argument.
The semantic model comes first. Star schema where the source supports one, explicit DAX measures instead of implicit aggregations, one date table, and relationships that go one direction unless there is a written reason otherwise.
Then refresh. Incremental refresh, so a nightly load processes yesterday rather than the last five years. Gateways installed on a server rather than a laptop that goes home at six.
Then row-level security. Tested with real user accounts, in a workspace, before anybody outside the project sees a number.
Then the reports. The fast part, and the part clients expect to be slow.
What It Actually Costs to Run
Pro is per user per month and is where most teams should stay. Premium Per User raises model size and refresh frequency for several times the price, still per user. Capacity is a flat monthly commitment independent of how many licences you hold.
The number that decides it is how many people consume versus how many build. Sixty readers and four builders points one way, six readers and four builders points the other.
We resell nothing and receive nothing from Microsoft, so our power bi consulting services recommendation costs you only the time it takes to answer that question.
Paginated and Operational Output
Dashboards answer questions. Some output has to be printed, archived or sent, and that is a different tool inside the same platform.
A power bi paginated report gives you pixel-accurate invoices, statements and regulatory returns straight from the model your dashboards already use. Where an on-premises estate is still in play, power bi for report server keeps that output running inside your own network.
One model, two delivery routes, and no second version of the truth.
How Engagements Run
Scoping is paid and produces a document: current state, running cost, what is broken, and options with numbers beside them. Clients have taken that document to cheaper builders, and it is theirs to use that way.
Then fixed price against a defined deliverable, or a day rate where scope genuinely resists definition. Everything is handed over documented, because a model only your power bi consultant can maintain is a liability you paid to acquire.
Send us your model and a microsoft bi consultant will give you a written read on it within the week.
Related Services
When numbers disagree before reaching a report, the work is data analytics rather than reporting. When data shows up late, partial, or as an emailed export, it is infrastructure and pipelines, and when output has to leave as a branded document, that is document automation.