Power BI vs. Halo BI

Since BI software’s birth, it has been easier collecting, analyzing, and converting business data into useful business insights. No extra data is thrown away because BI software solutions can interpret it using tools like data warehousing and visualization, dashboard, and reporting. Instead of pulling data from external resources, these software products use data that businesses produce. BI allows businesses to make sound decisions quickly based on evidence and establish customer purchasing patterns and marketing trends while helping them avoid business pitfalls.

Let’s look at two popular BI software solutions: Power BI vs. Halo BI. We’ll compare them based on features, integrations, and pricing models to help you determine the more suitable software product for your business. Use our free and easy-to-use Product Selection Tool to find more options and receive five recommendations of BI software options from our Technology Advisors. It won’t take more than five minutes.

Power BI vs. Halo BI: An overview

Power BI was designed for small to mid-sized businesses as a web-based suite of applications for business data analysis through rich visualizations. The online Power BI Service can be used to author reports using drag-and-drop tools and share these with other users, while the Power BI Desktop is for creating and distributing content for free. Users can utilize the Power BI Pro Web service to monitor data and share dashboards for a fee. They can view their business’s data metrics in real-time and in one place. The software allows on-the-go use with its mobile app and integrates with Microsoft Excel to interpret data in spreadsheets.

Halo BI is designed for any business size and specializes in operations, production, procurement, inventory, and sales analysis. It helps businesses plan and forecast inventory for supply chain management using data from all sources to create a collective view of business information. Halo BI produces data that can be used for sparking dialogues between employees to generate ideas for making sound business decisions. The software comes with two main components: data aggregation and analysis engine and powerful data visualization. Data aggregation and analysis takes data from different sources and puts them together in one repository. Data visualization allows users to customize dashboards they can view anytime from different devices.

Read also: Alteryx vs. Tableau: Working Together

Power BI vs. Halo BI: A comparison of features

Power BI helps business owners understand data the business produces through its set of features:

• Industry-leading AI: Power BI uses artificial intelligence (AI) to allow users with varying levels of technical knowledge to prepare data, build machine learning models, and process structured and unstructured data.
• Unified self-service and enterprise analytics: Businesses with data analytic and self-service needs can use a single platform to access paginated reports, application lifecycle management toolkit, open connectivity framework, and semantic models.
• DAX Data Analysis Function: There are over 200 functions under this feature. The DAX formula language has libraries for making data computations and analytical data models.
• Print Dashboard: Power BI makes board meetings more convenient with handy printable dashboards.
• Get Data (Data Source): Businesses can access data from anywhere because of Power BI’s array of cloud and on-premise data sources.
• Accelerated data prep with Azure: Analysts and engineers reduce the time they need for collaboration because of BI’s unlimited Azure data lake. Data analysis and sharing are simplified.

Other features of Power BI include:

• Natural language Q&A
• Excel integration
• Content pack
• Text analysis
• Custom visualization
•  Location analytics

Halo BI’s key features help make the software a top choice among business owners:

• Data warehousing and connectivity: Halo BI’s users can take, transform, and load data from any source regardless of file size. This helps create a centralized data warehouse with powerful and accurate analytics. The software can connect to TMS, ERP, CRM, and other third-party systems.
• Data quality assurance: The software has data cleansing tools and validation processes to ensure accurate and reliable results. Users have access to comprehensive data sets that can sync back to their original systems.
• Data visualization and dashboards: With Halo BI, data can be presented in various formats to ensure easy presentation of trends and patterns and comprehension by audiences. Users can utilize pre-built dashboards or create their own using drag-and-drop tools.
• Demand planning: Halo BI comes with predictive analytics tools that enable users to predict future trends and risks even before business decisions are made.

Halo BI has additional features such as:

• Inventory planning
• Share, collaborate, and take action
• Prebuilt modules

Power BI vs. Halo BI: A comparison of pricing

Power BI has two products: Power BI and Power BI Pro. Users who are novices in BI software solutions can take advantage of Power BI, which is free of charge. Users that have self-service needs are recommended to use the subscription-based Power BI Pro. It offers tools for sharing, publishing, and ad-hoc analysis that are managed by Microsoft. As for businesses that need support for big data, advanced analytics, and on-premise reporting, Power BI Premium is advised.

Halo BI does not have a free trial. It doesn’t publicly provide its pricing plans but welcomes quote requests from interested parties. This is a common practice among software vendors to ensure that subscribers understand the features they are getting and paying for.

Power BI vs. Halo BI: A comparison of integrations

Power BI users can easily use the software with other apps such as QuickBooks Online, Zendesk, Github, Azure, Google Analytics, Excel, Twilio, Salesforce, and Facebook.

Halo BI easily integrates with numerous business systems and applications like Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, SAP, JD Edwards, Oracle, and Microsoft SQL Server.

Give your business the suitable BI software 

When choosing your business’s BI software, consider ease of use for users who don’t have the same level of technical ability. It should have powerful data visualization to make understanding reports easier. Halo BI’s data loading capacity is impressive, which makes it the perfect software for businesses that deal with huge amounts of data. Power BI is suitable if your business needs access to various data sources.

Want more BI software options? Use our Product Selection Tool.