Microsoft Continues to Expand Capabilities of Power BI, Top BI Platform Among SAP Users

Microsoft Power BI is the most widely used third-party BI platform by SAP customers, according to recent SAPinsider research. Microsoft’s R&D investment strategy for Power BI emphasizes seamless integration with SAP systems, enabling SAP customers to leverage real-time data insights directly from their enterprise applications. By enhancing connectors and expanding Power BI’s compatibility with SAP HANA and SAP BW/4HANA, Microsoft ensures that SAP users can unlock advanced analytics and reporting capabilities without disrupting existing workflows. This focus on interoperability reflects Microsoft’s commitment to empowering SAP customers with intuitive, AI-driven tools for data visualization and decision-making. The company emphasizes user-friendly features, such as natural language processing, to democratize data insights across organizations. This approach aligns with Microsoft’s broader commitment to innovation, as evidenced by its substantial R&D expenditures, which reached approximately $29 billion in fiscal year 2024.

In recent months, Microsoft introduced Copilot in Power BI Mobile apps, bringing AI to mobile devices for a smarter, faster way to explore data on the go. Another new capability was a new Path layer for the Azure Map visual, making geospatial analysis even more powerful by helping users easily map connections between multiple locations. Also, Microsoft introduced the OneLake catalog, the latest evolution of the OneLake data hub, offering a unified platform for data engineers, data scientists, analysts, and decision-makers to browse, manage, and govern data seamlessly—all from one intuitive interface.

More notable updates in the Copilot and AI arena include enhanced Power BI report creation with Copilot and quick measure suggestions with Copilot to be replaced with Microsoft Fabric Copilot. In the reporting space, recent releases include visual calculations update, Azure map update – data bound reference layers, marker enhancements, new list slicer, Power BI enhanced report format (PBIR) update and Power BI in Teams (including the retirement of the ‘Teams activity analytics’ report.

New data modeling capabilities include dynamic format strings for measures, INFO.VIEW data analysis expressions (DAX) functions, and value filter behavior. In connectivity, Microsoft announced new Snowflake connector updates and also advised that Power BI mobile apps will no longer connect to report server using OAuth and AD FS 2016. And there have been quite a few data visualization enhancements, including data picker by Powerviz, cycle plot by Nova Silva, drill down network PRO by ZoomCharts, EDITable for reference/master data management with approval workflow, audit & governance and ADWISE advanced Column v1.0

According to Microsoft’s Power BI release announcements in Fall 2024, users can now choose from a variety of themes for Power BI Desktop, including the most requested Dark Mode. Users can personalize their data visualization experience to match their preferences and working environment. In addition, Microsoft consolidated similar options in the menu bar and streamlined the button text for better readability and responsive screen sizing. Also, the Copilot chat pane will now automatically provide text-based answers and summaries across all pages in a report. Previously, users had to specifically request cross-page summaries or click a “base summary on the entire report” button. With this update, cross-page summaries and answers are now the default setting, streamlining the exploration process.

Power BI also has a new feature designed to redefine how organizations manage and consume metrics and features visuals and Copilot insights Called Metrics Hub. Metrics Hub is a metric layer within Fabric, aimed at helping organizations define, discover, and reuse trusted metrics. This feature allows trusted creators within an organization to develop standardized metrics that incorporate essential business logic, ensuring consistency across the organization.

What this means for SAPinsiders

Don’t miss the 2025 Data Management and Analytics Buyers Guide. On December 31^st, we will be publishing our latest buyers guide for the SAP data management and analytics community, which will contain market trends, challenges, opportunities, technology buying tips, and vendor capabilities across sub categories including data integration, data migration and replication, data governance, data validation, data quality, data security, data privacy and compliance, data storage and architecture, business intelligence, reporting and analytics. Pick up the 2024 edition for some holiday refresh and then get the latest practical technology buying insights as we turn the calendars to 2025!

SAP and Microsoft combo can be a powerful boon to BI goals.  SAP customers who are also utilizing Power BI should start by using SAP HANA and SAP BW connectors to directly connect Power BI to SAP data sources, and leverage SAP-certified connectors for real-time access to enterprise data, enabling dynamic and up-to-date reporting. Also, SAP customers should take the opportunity to combine SAP data with other data sources. Merge SAP data with non-SAP data in Power BI to create unified dashboards for comprehensive insights. And use Power Query to transform and clean data, ensuring seamless integration from multiple systems. Utilize Power BI’s AI-driven features like natural language queries and machine learning models to uncover trends and patterns in SAP data, and implement Power BI Copilot for real-time assistance in data exploration and visualization creation. Finally, embed Power BI reports directly within SAP Fiori or other enterprise portals for ease of access, and share insights across teams using Power BI’s integration with Microsoft Teams, fostering collaborative decision-making.

Challenge Microsoft to continue to cater to SAP requirements. Opportunities to use your voice to influence Microsoft’s ongoing investments in the Power BI feature set include the following:

• Improve the performance and functionality of native connectors for SAP HANA, SAP BW/4HANA, and SAP S/4HANA, ensuring seamless data extraction and real-time insights.
• Develop out-of-the-box templates or pre-built data models for common SAP modules like Finance (FI), Supply Chain (SCM), and Human Resources (HR).
• Simplify the mapping of SAP’s technical metadata into user-friendly formats for non-technical users in Power BI.
• Introduce optimized query options to handle large-scale SAP datasets without impacting system performance.
• Expand and simplify incremental data refresh capabilities to ensure efficient handling of SAP’s continuously updating datasets.
• Provide enhanced in-memory processing options to accelerate data visualization and reduce latency for SAP data.
• Develop pre-configured visualizations tailored to SAP business processes, such as operational dashboards for procurement, production, and financial analytics.
• Integrate analytics designed specifically for SAP vertical solutions, like SAP Retail, SAP Healthcare, and SAP Utilities.
• Enhance AI-driven features to provide predictive insights from SAP data, leveraging SAP’s historical datasets.
• Expand Power BI’s natural language capabilities to support SAP-specific terminologies and data structures, enabling intuitive queries for SAP users.
• Provide seamless embedding of Power BI dashboards in SAP Fiori apps for unified user experiences.
• Enhance integration with Microsoft Teams for SAP customers, enabling collaborative decision-making with SAP-powered insights.
• Enhance row-level and column-level security to align with SAP’s security protocols.
• Provide tighter integration with SAP Data Intelligence and SAP Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) tools for secure analytics workflows.